The taming of a cat (and much more!)

Anne Kaier has written a lovely memoir about rescuing a stray cat, bringing him home to her new house, and building a relationship that helps make her house a home for the both of them. She has been on a blog tour with her book, and I invited her to Sunday TOAST so she can share her process with us.

JB: Anne, can you tell us what compelled you to write this delightful book, Home with Henry?

AK: Curiosity played  a large part. I had literally picked up a wounded feral cat after someone had hit him in a busy road. I had no idea what to do with him. After the vet checked him out, I brought him home to live with me. However, he hid under the bed and hissed every time I approached. Who, except for my dear vet, would give me advice about how to tame him? It was 1997. The internet was in its infancy, so I couldn't go online to get help. I kept a journal to record Henry's daily progress--or lack of it--so I would have a record of what happened. I thought it would be interesting to reread in later years. When I stopped keeping the journal, I realized I had a manuscript that people might enjoy reading. When a publisher approached me, I thought a cat memoir would reach a broad audience. Home with Henry is now my publisher's best selling book.

JB: What are the themes you explored in this memoir? Did they emerge organically in writing the draft, or did you purposely choose the themes before you began writing?

AK: Life as a single woman is a major theme. How do you construct a kind of "alternate family" when you are single and, as in my case, have no children? I purposely included my adventures with my friends and my nephew Tommy, a frisky ten-year-old, to show how I have brought people into my life. The human-animal bond, with all its joys, is obviously a major theme. The importance of work friends is also a biggie. I wanted to include scenes set at work because my work friends helped me as I was taming Henry. The city dweller's need for a natural world also figured in the book. Some of these themes appeared in my original journal entries, which became the first draft of the book. Others, such as the emphasis on the natural world, emerged organically in later drafts.

JB: You are a poet, an essayist, and a memoirist. How do you select a genre for a particular subject? In particular, why was Home with Henry told in journal entries rather than a series of essays or a poetry chapbook?

AK: When I wrote journal entries as I was trying to domesticate Henry, I didn't know how the story would end. Would Henry spend his life hiding under the bed? Would he run away? I wanted the reader to have the same feeling of suspense as I did. So I kept it in chronological journal format.

JB: What was hardest or most challenging about writing the book?

AK: One of the hardest things was to weave all the themes together. I wanted to keep the primary focus on the cat, but sub-themes entered the story. I rewrote several times to get a good balance between the cat scenes and the nephew scenes, for example.

JB: One of the reasons people write about their life is to make sense of it. You once said in an interview published in Wordgathering: "When I'm writing about my life, I feel that I can partially define how I am perceived--and perhaps, influence how I see myself." Can you expand on this statement?

AK: As a single woman and a person with a physical difference--I have a skin problem like psoriasis--I can easily be stereotyped. Especially in a cat story. I wanted to be perceived as the fairly complicated, intelligent woman I am. However, this is a pet memoir, so I saw it as lighter in tone than other essays and poems I've written. I worked to bring the nuance and humor into my self-portrait. 

JB: An editor once told me that you have to give up a piece of yourself for a story to be more than a nice, or funny, or sad, or horrific memory turned into a story. Do you think it takes courage to write from one's life? What parts of yourself did you give to the reader in Home with Henry?

AK: Your editor had a great insight. It does take courage to write an honest memoir. It's always hard to reveal your vulnerabilities. I wanted to be honest about my life as a single woman. I also wanted to celebrate the choices I've made. And I wanted to celebate Henry himself. That was the easy part--to write about his quirky ways and his innate sweetness.

JB: Thank you, Anne. Now... for my loyal readers, you can purchase Home with Henry: a memoir by Anne Kaier online at www.barnesandnoble.com or at www.amazon.com. It is a book you will want to share with your friends and your children, for it is a classic in the making.

And, if you are inspired to write your own cat story, Anne has authored "Tall Tails: How to Write about Your Cat." It's free and available on her website: www.annekaier.com/.
  

An amazing writing tip

Disclaimer: I found this advice in one of my computer files. I have no idea where it came from, but I am fairly certain it is not my work. Having said that, I think it is outstanding advice to those of us who are trying to make TOAST by Telling Our Amazing Stories Together. My apologies to the author who shared this strategy for writing memoir. If I knew who you were, I'd certainly give you credit. 

“Remember to remember,” writes novelist Henry Miller. The primary resource for your life stories is YOU, that is, your own recollections of events that took place in your earlier life. However, memory is imperfect. Did you ever notice how different relatives will give distinct versions of what happened at a family event? That’s because our memory is selective.

One way to sharpen your memory is through meditation. If you aren’t in a formal meditation class or don’t know how, here is a guideline:

1. Find a quiet place, a time, and a setting in which you can clear your mind and think back on your life. What was it like? What really transpired? 
2.  Focus on one part of your life at a time. Tell yourself, “Today I’m going to think about my school days,” or “my first job” or “my mother’s relationship with me” or “my job at…”
3. Visualize, visualize, visualize! The psychiatric profession advises this also in the practice of relaxation therapy. Form a picture in your mind of the way things were. Take a visual trip in your mind through the hallways of your old elementary school. Visualize that trip down the Guadalupe River on that last summer vacation with your dad. Run a movie in your mind, the movie of your life, one scene at a time. 
4.  Form the mental pictures in your mind and watch the movie, rewind if necessary but try not to fast forward through the sad parts.
5. Transfer that visual movie into prose. Re-create your life through memory and visualization.

Why I am a writer

My friend Nancy asked me yesterday in an email, "What is it that makes you want to write, that removes writer's block, that gets the creative stream flowing for you?" I see that as a 3-part question. Here's my answer.

I am the middle child, the only girl, bookended by two boys in a family that prized males. I have strong memories of my brothers shouting to be heard over each other, but when I  tried to put in my 2 cents, my parents would scold me. "Be quiet, or "Stop being so loud." I remember at least once saying (probably whining) to my mother, "Stone and Mark are being loud. Why aren't you saying anything to them?" We were in West Texas at my grandmother's breakfast table eating bacon and eggs, and biscuits and cream gravy. My brothers, ages 10 and 5 at the time, and I were having some kind of competition to show who had the fullest tummy by sticking out our bellies and each of us claiming victory. Mother answered, "They're boys." The subtext was loud and  clear even to a 6-year-old. Boys are going to be heard even if they have to shout, and they should shout to be heard because, as my mother so succinctly put it, "they're boys."  I got very quiet.

Over the years, though, I still tried to say what was on my mind or in my heart. But I'd get excited and my voice would rise several octaves, which must have threatened everyone's peace because I'd get the order: "Lower your voice!" Those three words used to paint scarlet blotches of shame across my face. Truth is, they still do. I may be in my 60s, but if you tell me to lower my vice, no matter what the reason, I become a red-faced 6-year-old. Therapy helped me understand why, but my body's response is visceral not intellectual. Is it any wonder I started writing when I was in grade school?

I write today because I want to matter. I want to be heard. I need to give voice to what I know, to what I believe, to what I dream, to what I imagine, to what I know for sure and what I'm still wondering about. I write to get your attention. Can you hear me?

Writer's block comes when I'm not sure where I'm going.  I feel like I'm stuttering and stammering, unsure of my direction, writing off the map. I'm afraid my writing looks messy and unfocused and you'll think I'm illiterate if you read it. But writer's block goes away as soon as I remind myself that writing IS messy. False starts, side trails, backtracks, do-overs, trivialities, banalities--they're all part of the stew that stirs the story. The messiness is part of the process, probably the most important part, to tell the truth. But its' not the part that goes public. It's similar to when an artist mixes paint. You're not privy to that. Only when the colors are bended to the artist's satisfaction, whether Pollock or Thomas Kincaid, do you get to view the painting. So I remind myself that writing is organically messy, and I delve into my subconscious like a child digging into finger paints and  my writer's block dissolves like sugar in the rain.

My friend and writing mentor Karleen Koen talks about "the flow." If I show up and do the work, there'll come those moments when I get into the flow. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation or any of that stuff, she advises. So I've learned to go with the flow and capture the words that bring life to the story, grammar be damned. Editing can show up later, but right now, it's me and my creative muse riding the rapids.

What keeps the creative stream flowing is two-fold: giving up myself to the process (see above) and being a voracious reader. I loooooove to read. My house is filled with hardbound and paperback books; my iPad is filled with electronic editions. I enjoy getting inside other writers' minds, seeing how they think, imagine, create. They show me, by example, how to describe a setting, turn a phrase, twist a plot and blow people's minds. They are my tribe, and I learn the art of storytelling on the pages within their books. I only have to remind myself, sometimes over and over and over again, that I'm reading the finished piece and not the messiness they embraced to get there. They inspire me, they encourage me, and they show me that writing is more lasting than the echo of young boys shouting.