Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode Twenty-Nine
How Can I Braid My Life Story With My Deceased Partner’s?
Welcome to the fourth episode in my season of summer shorts, a series of shorter episodes where you'll hear from writers working in the trenches right alongside you. Each week they'll share their fears, doubts, and questions they have about the craft of writing and the writing life. Consider it your backstage pass to my coaching practice.
This week, you'll hear from Meredith Master, a blind writer living in New York City who’s working to write about disability from two different angles: her experience of losing her sight and learning to survive and her partner’s struggle with a traumatic brain injury that led to an addiction and tragic overdose. During this episode, we explore various ways to braid these stories together, writing with a disability, and the challenges of crafting a story about someone who’s gone.
Before we get to our conversation, I have a few questions for you. Have you ever written about someone who died? What challenges did you face in terms of telling their story and figuring out how to structure it? How did you care for yourself emotionally as you did this work? I hope you’ll ponder these questions as you listen along. Now, let’s get to my conversation with Meredith Master.
Lisa [0:00]
Well, hello Meredith, welcome to the Writing Resilience Podcast. I am so glad to have you on.
Meredith [0:05]
Thank you. It's good to be here. Appreciate it.
Lisa [0:08]
Well, I appreciate you as one of my newsletter followers and a fellow writer in the trenches. And so, I want to begin by giving you a chance to talk just briefly about your project and who you are.
Meredith [0:23]
Okay, I'm Meredith. I am a writer with blindness living in New York City with my guide dog, Ivan, and my useless dog, Jelly Roll—no disrespect. I am formerly an attorney and many other things, back when I had eyesight. I lost my vision as an adult, gradually over 20 years. And now I'm writing about it.
Lisa [0:56]
And I'm so glad that you are. Can you tell us a little about your project?
Meredith [1:00]
Yes, it's a story about survival and love, but not necessarily commingling the two. Back in the ‘90s, I was a young gal-about-town of privilege from the Connecticut suburbs of New York City, ski bumming in Vail, Colorado after college, and, you know, living my best life as I say. Anyway, I met this fellow who was also ski bumming in Vail and was a musician and did après-ski and was a weatherman in Vail after college. I met him when he was playing my favorite tavern in Minturn, Colorado. And I could see him. He just knocked me out, and I thought he was completely out of my league, and I was already seeing somebody else. But I never forgot him. Anyway, fast forward 20-ish years, and we're both living in New York City. We reconnect after I found out I was going to go blind and then did go blind. He had a motorcycle accident that left him with a serious traumatic brain injury that he really wasn't expected to recover from. He was in the hospital for a couple of years. And I'm going to be telling my story and his story about our love story and our very different outcomes as he passed away from accidental fentanyl poisoning just as he was beginning his career as a drug addiction counselor.
Lisa [2:47]
Yeah, and so this is a story of love and loss, and two different outcomes. And you had a question for me around how in the world do you tell the story?
Meredith [3:01]
Yes, I was thinking about braiding our stories during the time that we were not interwoven—telling my story about going blind and struggling with that, and how I've come out the other end, and I'm doing okay. But I want to tell Michael's story too, including the time I didn't know him. Obviously, I knew a lot about him. He was my life partner; we lived together. But his life ended and mine didn't. So, I was thinking about contrasting our two experiences in a braided format. Just to tell the story of two different survival stories of coming to terms with shocking and catastrophic disabilities.
Lisa [3:58]
Yeah, so this is a story about how you live with disability, especially a catastrophic one that radically changes your life. And I'm imagining you as the narrator, how do you deal with these different outcomes? You've survived thus far; your partner did not. And how do you reconcile the two?
Meredith [4:21]
How do I reconcile it? I know how to tell my story in the first person in memoir form, but how do I tell his story? I mean, do I do a biography of him? And then until it becomes more about us together? And am I even—do I have license to even tell his story biographically?
Lisa [4:48]
So let's explore that. Is that okay with you?
Meredith [4:50]
Yes, anything.
Lisa [4:51]
All right. So first, I want to talk about what a braided narrative is in case someone's listening and they're like, "I don't know that word." So, if someone is writing a braided memoir, a braided memoir has two or more stories, usually not more than three, that are complete stories, right? So, we have a complete arc from beginning to end where this character transforms in some way. And we'll call it character A. So, character A transforms in some way, and that's probably you, the narrator. And then we have character B transforms or changes in some way. And in this case, that would be your boyfriend or your partner. So, each one has their own complete narrative. And telling them together helps the reader understand something else, so that the reader will understand something that they could not understand if they just read one story by itself.
So, an example that I often use of the braided memoir is The Fact of a Body, which is by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich. So, in that braided memoir. There is the story of Alex, the narrator, who grows up in a home where there is incest, and nobody's talking about it. And so, this person is sexually abused by a grandfather and then the ramifications of it. The other part, the B story, we'll call it, is the story of Ricky Langley, who is a pedophile, who ended up murdering this young boy named Jeremy. And it's an exploration of how did someone do this and get to be this way. So it's kind of an origin story for Ricky Langley, and an exploration of how in the world a person could do something like this. These stories, when they're put together, the way that Alex Marzano-Lesnevich did this, helps us understand how tricky the truth actually is. And it makes us really wrestle with what justice is. So, if we just saw one of these stories by themselves, we would have one impression of what the truth is and what justice is; together, we get a completely different story. If you're listening to this, and you're like, "Wow, that sounds really complex," I would say yes, it is. Braided memoirs are often the most complex form. It doesn't mean you can't do it; they just take longer, because you have to think about both those things. So, I know you are 90 pages into writing your manuscript, but you're trying to figure out what the story is. So, what I hope to do today is offer some clarity and some direction around how you could potentially write that or at least write about your boyfriend's past—the part of your life that you're not a part of—so that you can bring him to life and bring that context into the present story where the tragedy occurs. Right. So, here's my first question to you. And I want to tell you that "I have no clue" is a perfectly good response to any question. So, when you're thinking about this, are you married to the idea that this is a braided memoir in the way that I've described it? Or are you just really feeling like you want to bring his story alongside yours?
Meredith [8:35]
I'm not exactly sure. I sort of feel like his backstory before we reconnected after 20-something years should be told because I think it has a lot to do with his outcome. But I mean, is it a third person? Wouldn't it be? I just, I don't know how to braid it. Yeah, because I think ultimately, it's almost like a V—no, like a diamond because we'd met and then we went our separate ways. And then we came back together, right? Through disability.
Lisa [9:17]
And you know what it could be? I'm just going to offer this as an invitation. And I want you to say yes or no, is that maybe if we think about this as a quest, or a journey, or a question. Most books are answering the question that the writer has inside them that they want to know the answer. And so, a question I'm wondering about that might be inside you is how could we have such different outcomes? Does that sound like the question?
Meredith [9:50]
Yeah, that sounds basically like my thesis. How do I live through this? Yeah, he didn't. I mean, he did for a while but then he didn’t.
Lisa [10:01]
Yeah, so how does that happen? So if that's your thesis, I want to just say at this point, you have permission to tell that other part of the story, it will all depend on how you tell it, that's going to be the key, or the trick is, how do you tell the story when you weren't there, and I've got some ideas for you. Okay, so that's my goal today. So, if you start off with the framing of your story as, I don't know, some point in the present moment, or what we'll call story present. Something has happened. And I have to know why I'm alive and he's not, how in the world has this happened, so that you have some sort of trigger moment. The lens you put towards the past is always looking at, how did we get here? How did we get to this place where we have such different outcomes. Because you are the narrator, and you know, your life story, you know what was inside your head, it probably makes sense that you are the main character, the narrator, and that you are sharing your story of transformation. But you can also tell your partner's or your boyfriend story. And I'm going to give you an example of how to do this. So, this is a book that I want you to get. And I'm pretty sure there is an audiobook version and there may be a braille version. Do you read Braille? Or do you do more audiobooks?
Meredith [11:35]
I do not read Braille. My understanding is, at this point, only people, younger generations who weren't born blind, read Braille. But I don't know that for a fact.
Lisa [11:47]
This is a New York Times bestselling book, and I'm certain it has an audiobook. So, I think it would be a good option for you. So, Sarah Perry, she was a guest on my show, she wrote the book After the Eclipse. This story is about how Sarah's mother is murdered when Sarah is 11 years old, and she's in the next room. So, she's the closest thing to a witness, but she did not witness the murder. Her door was closed. And fortunately, she survived. And the person who committed this crime left. So, one arc of the story is, how do you survive something like this when everyone thinks you're the main witness, and you're not? So how do you survive the death of your mother? And how do you navigate this criminal justice system that's asking something from you that you cannot offer? That's Sarah's story. She knows it well, because she lived it. But another thread and another part of this book is the story of who her mother was. Right? She didn't want to create a book where the whole inciting incident is my mom died on page 20. And then she's not in the book anymore. She cared about bringing her mother to life, and having her mother be a character in this book for as long as possible. But because she was only 11 years old, there was a lot of her mother's life that she wasn't present for, that she would have to be able to talk about and write about. And she wrote in scenes, so she shared these scenes as if they were happening, and they were, what would be called speculative scenes. In memoir, a speculative scene is where you're not present and you're writing it as if you have direct knowledge of what happened. So, she wrote a lot of speculative scenes to bring her mother to light. To do that, she did a lot of research. And in her case, she interviewed as many people as she could to learn about her mother's life. So anytime you're bringing in somebody's story that's not yours, you are taking on a lot of research so that you can bring in as much as possible, as accurately as possible, knowing that you can never be in that character's head, because there's no way that anyone can know what was in that character's mind unless you have access to diaries or journals. I know that was a lot.
Meredith [14:35]
That was really helpful, because I do want to make sure that Michael is portrayed as the loving person that he was and not just a tragic event. Yeah, one hitch in telling his story is that I didn't always get the truth because I think he carried a lot of shame about what happened to him. And because of my blindness, he was able to hide some things from me that maybe a sighted person would have caught on to more quickly. And since he had a traumatic brain injury, it's almost hard to tell what's him recovering from the injury versus what's his drug problem. Yeah. And there's something that happened that made it very clear that there was in fact, a drug problem. And it was probably the drug problem and not the brain injury that was making him present the way he did. Unfortunately, his parents both died, they both died in our time together. And his mother, according to him, and one of his sisters is a serious controlling er. So that goes to part of this, and he just has two sisters who are currently living. And I know his whole backstory through them. Otherwise, I'm not sure how much more I can learn at this point.
Lisa [16:09]
Start by writing what you can. When you find gaps, I would make a list of all the people that you could potentially interview who could tell you more about certain scenes where you weren't present. And so, when you get to a place where you need more information, you go to that list, and ask these people to have a recorded conversation with you so that you have some more language around it, and you have the words and then you can of course, create transcripts from that. And as a person who is unsighted, you may need to use other kinds of assistive technology to help you digest and retrieve this information. So, think about what kind of assistive technology you need to do that work. But the more you have those interviews, and the more you have documentation, the stronger the case is going to be for this being traditionally published, because a publisher is going to want to know how you can verify what you’re writing. Like, is it just word of mouth or that you're remembering this person telling you a story? Or do you have corroborating evidence, or documentation, or research that you've done to help create this character, because the more you want to braid and bring in parts of his life that you are not present for, the more that research becomes important.
Meredith [17:44]
Right, I should probably ask his older sister if she would be willing to participate in this and provide a bunch of research. I can't say for sure that she would. But she might. Michael knew I was telling his story when he was still alive. This was before the fentanyl, before I knew that was going to happen. I haven't incorporated that into this yet.
Lisa [18:15]:
And it may take time to do that. And here's what I would say: write your story first, as you remember it, before asking other people for interviews and things like that. So, write the story that you want to write first, see what you have, see what your memories are. Because that may also direct you to write your book in the ways we're describing or something else. You never know where writing your story is going to take you. So, I would do that. First, see what you have. And then, as you write about his life, and you find gaps, or you find things you need to corroborate or research, then pull people in and ask them if they would be willing to help. And you may also think about other people outside of his family who might have known him. And the reason I say that is because family can be tricky. Some family members are going to be very willing, especially because, you know, when you're writing this, you're bringing him back to life. That can be very exciting for people. However, they may also have an investment in him being seen in a certain way. And so that's why I say family can be tricky. But think about, you know, friends and mentors. It sounds like he was in a graduate school program because he was just getting ready to be an addictions counselor. So, he received some kind of training to be able to do that. So, if you can reach out to the people who trained him and ask them questions, or, you know, I know you said he was a musician, so if you can locate musicians that he worked with at a certain point in his career, just think broadly about the variety of different people who might be able to tell you more about his life. And that may add a richness to this work.
Well, I know that this is a very compressed answer to a very complex question. But because these are summer shorts, this is a shorter interview. I'm going to let you digest all of that, knowing you can always ask me another question later. And you're going to listen to this a few times. And I'm sure that will also generate more thoughts. But I want to end with three questions that I always ask everyone. So, the first question is, what is the best piece of writing advice you've received?
Meredith [20:45]:
My personal favorite piece of advice is from Stephen King's book On Writing about limiting your use of adverbs.
Lisa [20:59]:
Oh, yes, that is a good one.
I love that book. It’s on my bookshelf behind me. And I think about it often. And my favorite is about don't put your writing desk in the center of the room, make sure it's against a wall because the center of your life should be life. And, you know, this is a tough story that you're working on. It involves grief. It involves self-exploration and thinking about things that may be challenging. So, how are you nurturing your resilience as you do this work?
Meredith [21:37]:
I've done a lot of therapeutic work in the last few years, including grief counseling. After he died, I had put this project on hold because I could not function for quite a while. I do a lot of therapy, I meditate. Get outside, stay in the moment as best I can. And then writing is very cathartic for me. And like you said, when you write, it often goes in a different direction than you imagined, and it becomes a thing of its own. Yeah. And sharing my story with my readers is helpful in resolving some of the pain.
Lisa [22:27]:
Well, I'm so glad that you're doing that work. And I'm also glad that you listen to yourself and take breaks when you need to. Because anytime a story involves grief, we are coming up against the edge of who we are. And whenever that happens, we want to be really gentle with ourselves. And you know, just take deep breaths and let the story marinate for a while so that we can continue to do the healing work because grief is exhausting.
Meredith [22:57]:
Oh, tell me about it.
Lisa [23:00]:
One of the most exhausting physical things that we can do.
Meredith [23:05]:
I know. Michael and I are both atheists. And I've gotten signs from him. So, I've had to do a lot of work with reconciling those two things. But that's another story.
Lisa [23:23]:
And it sounds like a powerful one that I hope you write. Well, if people want to connect with you, you know, writing is so important, and it's so important to do it in community. How can people reach out to you and connect?
Meredith [23:39]:
Oh, I would love that. I am always looking for more writers to be in community with. And I'm also seeking representation. I have several projects. My name is Meredith Master, and I'm on Facebook. I'm not a big social media person, but that is active. I can also be reached by email at meredithmaster@gmail.com, one word, no punctuation. If you're a writer, or humorist, or just want to talk, and I'm always looking to meet more people with disabilities.
Lisa [24:17]:
Wonderful. Well, in case anyone missed that, I will make sure that it is in the show notes so people will have access to it. And I hope that they do connect with you, because you have so much to offer. You have such a powerful story that you are working on. And I am deeply honored to know you, and I am so glad to have had you on the podcast today.
Meredith [24:40]:
Deeply honored to be here. I'm a huge fan of your work and advice and guidance. And I was very honored to be asked on, so thank you.
