Laura Zera

Memoir That Isn’t Memnoir: Tragedy and Levity

Many a memoir covers topics and events of tragedy and trauma; they are about real life, after all, and almost anybody who has ever engaged in a relationship with another two-legged creature is going to have some T&T filed away on their hard drive. (Hopefully they don’t need anything bigger than 500 gigabytes.) Some of the most hideously-traumatic experiences lead to the most uplifting stories, told by a protagonist who models resilience and compassion. But here’s the component that some people might find gauche: Tragedy + time = humor.

I was chatting with a writing acquaintance over tea recently when this concept came up. Her family’s story includes a serious mental illness and a gruesome murder, and when she pitched her memoir manuscript to agents, she was told over and over again that it was too dark and heavy. “Oh, yeah, no,” I said. (I really like to say “yeah, no.”) “Yeah, no, you’ve got to put some funny stuff in there.” She looked at me like I’d just farted in front of the Queen. “I need humor,” she responded. “In a story where someone is decapitated.” “Oh, yeah, yeah,” I said. (I do a lot of double-yeahs, too.) “I mean, not in the actual decapitation scene. That would be disrespectful. But in other places, with characters who can be used as a patsy of sorts. Or you find it in the ridiculous. Or from irony. Irony is a great source of humor.”

Wait long enough to tell your story and you'll also avoid a libel suit — Wait long enough to tell your story and you’ll also avoid a libel suit

By now, this woman was sizing me up for a hand-tailored sociopath suit. Unconvinced by my advice, she asked the third person at the table, who, luckily, agreed wholeheartedly with me. You see, as the author and protagonist, it’s likely that one of the reasons you survived trauma and tragedy in the first place was because of humor. You had to have laughed at some point, and most likely when you did, you remember it, because the feeling was such a marked departure from your distress, and it helped you to either start healing or stay afloat. And if you can’t find the humor amid your tragedy and trauma, then it may not yet be the appropriate time to write the story.

Put the shoe on the other foot for a moment, or even on a hand, if you can’t bear to pull off your second shoe in order to make way for the first one to go on. As readers, we don’t want to ingest a true-life account that is going to leave us devastated and needing time off from work. We expect that you, the writer, will have already done all the therapy, distilled the bittersweet lessons from your life experience, and told us about it in a way that makes us go, “Crap, that was rough, but I so admire the way the author has been able to rise above it. It gives me hope for myself and others.” And we don’t mind a good cry, but only if there’s an even better laugh when we flip the page.

Dorky balances crazy any day — My dad (not Buddy Holly)

If you write memoir, think about this: Who are some larger-than-life or perfect-caricature characters in your life story, the ones whose personalities you can play up to add some levity and balance? Even minor characters can add tremendously in this area. In my memoir manuscript, I use my dad’s off-the-scale dork factor to offset the painful scenes with my mother. On the other hand, some scenes in my book were excruciating and humiliating at the time that they occurred, but without changing a thing, they’re now funny. So, let’s build on that earlier equation: Tragedy + time = humor, where “time” is equal to “x,” and “x” is different for each and every writer out there. When you can think back on your life—all of it, at any given point—and smile, you’ll know you’ve found your “x.”

What do you guys think? Writers and readers, I love to hear from you, so please leave a comment!

p.s. I do make the occasional exception with regard to stories that leave readers devastated. Sometimes we need to have a tragedy permanently burned into our brains in order to prevent it from ever happening again, e.g., the Holocaust.

p.p.s. A wee memoir update from me: After three years of work, I think that I’m finally mere weeks away from finishing the last edits before I submit to agents. My critique partners Andrea and Tracy, to whom I am forever indebted, are currently working through the book’s last chapters, during which time I’m putting together the book proposal and marketing plan. After that, one last whirl through my (second) group of beta readers, and I pray I can call it good, literally and figuratively. And if that’s not the case, well, you’ll find me weeping at my keyboard, then working on the manuscript some more, because hard work + time = memoir, where “time” equals “who flippin’ knows.”

Travel: TSA Precheck in a Nutshell

By Laura Zera 14 Comments

Whenever I’m in an airport or about to cross a border, my collectivist cultural outlook goes out the car, plane or train window. Elite status? Yes, please. Fast-pass lane? I’m there. Step on some children’s hands in the process of queue jumping? If I must. (Oh, come on, they’re children, they heal quickly.)

There are four flavors of the trusted traveler designation for Canada and the United States, depending on how you want to sign up – TSA Pre✓™ Application Program, Global Entry, NEXUS or SENTRI (here’s a comparison chart). Like Neapolitan ice cream, they kind of melt together; membership in one can give you the benefits of the others. And, like Neopolitan ice cream that’s doled out by your mother, sometimes even when you’ve eaten all your vegetables, the benefits can be withheld completely. Just remember that Trusted Traveler program membership doesn’t actually elevate your rights as a citizen, and you’ll get along fine.

I first joined in 2002, when I was still up in Canada, and dating an American (now my husband). Just try driving across the border in peak-travel August for a first date; I was two-and-a-half hours late (and he waited). After our third date, I applied for Nexus, and now enjoy the extra benefits of using the Global Entry kiosks and TSA Precheck lanes in U.S. airports (when the government employees want to let me).

Here are some quick, and key, facts about TSA Precheck.

Eleven airlines currently participate: Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Sun Country, United Airlines, US Airways and Virgin America.
There are now 118 airports in the U.S. with Precheck security lanes. The list is here.
TSA Precheck lanes aren’t always open. Fly at 10:30 at night, and you might have to schlep through security with the common folk.
With TSA Precheck, you don’t have to remove your shoes, belts and light outerwear, and you can leave your laptop and clear zip-top bags of liquids and gels in your carry-on luggage. This is fantastic for me, especially when I’m traveling sans socks, as the slug trails that my sweaty feet leave on the airport floor could potentially flag me as a dubious sort who is shifty and nervous. Yeah, I’ll pay three times the membership fee for the privilege of leaving my shoes on (and now that you’ve just contemplated having to follow in the footsteps of people like me in the airport security area, you probably will, too).
The airline must have your Trusted Traveler program number ahead of time, so make sure it is saved in your profile details with each airline. If the airline doesn’t have it, you won’t get the “TSA Precheck” indicator printed on your boarding pass when you show up at the airport.
Sometimes your boarding pass will still have the TSA Precheck indicator even if there’s no Precheck program (and lane) at that particular airport, so don’t drive yourself crazy looking for it.
TSA agents still act as traffic cops, in that if the regular lines are super busy, they can route anybody they want over to the Precheck line (it’s usually families with children and wheelchair-bound passengers). And, if they want you to go in a regular line, even with your fancy-shmancy Precheck membership and indicator on your boarding pass, they can send you to a regular line.

My opinion is that TSA Precheck helps if you fly regularly within the United States, e.g., frequent business trips. For the average person, it’s probably not worth the hassle and cost of getting a membership. However, if you drive across borders a lot, like I do, then getting into the Nexus program, with its add-on benefits of Global Entry and TSA Precheck, makes a whole lot of sense.

What are your thoughts on TSA Precheck or the other U.S. Trusted Traveler programs?

George Clooney Got Engaged, and We Acted Like Assholes

By Laura Zera 14 Comments

George Clooney keeps his personal life so private, and held on to his bachelor status for so long, that we, the media-watching world at large, pretty much figured hell would freeze over before he got married again. Plus, that’s what the media told us.

Last week’s announcement of Clooney’s engagement caught us off guard, then, hey? Nope, nope, I never saw it coming, either. Just who is this Amal Alamuddin he’s going to marry, anyway? She sure is purdy. And she’s a lawyer. Who provides consultation to high-powered leaders (Kofi Annan) and represents high-profile cases (Julian Assange). Wow. She’s smart and accomplished, then, too.

This is just about where we–now I’m referring mainly to my female counterparts—threw our sisters under the bus. Because everywhere I turned, the news stories said something like, “it took a woman like Amal to get George to commit,” or “he’s finally met his equal,” or “look at her credentials, it’s no wonder he finally got engaged.” When I saw these sentiments, I totally agreed, and I’m betting I’m in good company.

It was only later I realized that in first assigning such high value to Alamuddin’s education and career, and then nodding my head with regard to the obviousness that it would take a woman like her to “get Clooney to settle down,” I was devaluing the women who dated him prior. Because, as the stories imply, of course Clooney wasn’t going to marry a cocktail waitress (Sarah Larson), or an ex-professional wrestler (Stacy Keibler). And what about the one who had no known career in America to speak of (Elisabetta Canalis)? Gadzooks, this engagement makes perfect sense!

For a woman who is all about supporting other women, and, even bigger, espousing that we are all fundamentally equal on this planet, I sure wasn’t walking the walk.

Of course, this was just celebrity news, and I don’t know any of these women, but that’s part of the point. Who are we—now I’m back to the media-watching world at large, but with special emphasis on my female counterparts—to rank Clooney’s girlfriends in terms of marriage worthiness? We don’t know a single thing about their hearts and souls. God, I feel like calling them up and apologizing on behalf of the world for being such an asshole.

Wait a minute. This has farther-reaching implications. Who else do we do this to? Rather, who else do we profess to support, and yet, nod our heads slyly when one gets a job promotion over another, or when we lose 10 pounds while a gal pal (had to say it, since we started out in “celebrity-talk mode”) gains 20? Or when someone we know gets a degree, and we think, “Oh, it’s only in Arts.”

I do it regularly at the gym. I’m always all like, “It doesn’t matter what shape or size or fitness level you are, it just matters that you’re here,” but then I gloat a bit when I sit down at a weight machine after another woman and can notch the peg a few bars further, to a heavier load.

Here’s the thing: I’m not writing this post to catch the attention of the semi-permanent assholes out there, the people who are so miserable in their own lives that they can’t even barf out a kind word for Mother Teresa. Not my target audience.

My message is aimed at those who are trying to be kind, authentic, supportive people (the way I like to think I am). Yes, we can be assholes, too! But we’re trying. Not to be, I mean. We strive to be kind, authentic, supportive people, so when we fall off the wagon, we don’t need to judge ourselves, we just need to be aware. Watch that thought (or spoken digression). Look at it, turning it like a Rubik’s cube, then scratch your head. Where is that judgment coming from? What do you think might have made you react that way? (Because it’s so out of character for you! Yes, okay, now I’m sucking up.) Chances are good that it’s stemming from something you feel or believe about yourself, and instead of disposing of that crap at the hazardous waste center, you’re letting it trickle down your driveway and into the main sewage system. Don’t do that. It’s icky, and you know it, because you can feel it.

As for George and Amal, congratulations to them! We wish them much happiness. And that’s enough. Full stop.

Have you teetered across the line into asshole territory lately? Do tell! And change names to protect the innocent.

Unaltered image of George Clooney taken by Angela George and available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Mental Health Treatment and Mass Shootings

By Laura Zera 10 Comments

After each mass shooting in the United States, there are calls for increased gun control, better access to mental health services, or both. Fuelled by emotion, we seek solutions; I have been right in there, too, simultaneously grieving those lost and asking for system changes to prevent reoccurrences.

A bit ago, I came across an article which hypothesized that improved mental health treatment won’t impact mass shootings or school killings. The author, Dr. John M. Grohol, founder of website PsychCentral.com, focuses on school shootings in this piece, and posits that what will help most is restricted access to household guns, and more involved parenting.

When I re-read this piece today, I pondered whether I agreed or not (and then I veered off to something about the Paul Simon and Edie Brickell arrests for disorderly conduct, and then I saw a Jennifer Aniston story that I just had to read—love her—and then I came back to this mental health piece. And so it goes. Sometimes it helps to break the tough topics into bite-size pieces.).

Like I said, I’ve let my emotions lead me into the debate before. After Sandy Hook, I was annoyed that some people focused on gun control, when for me, the shooter so clearly needed mental health services. “That’s what it’s about,” I said, “because a person with a mental illness can always find a weapon.” Then I read a comment on Dr. Grohol’s piece, which reminded me how complicated each and every case is. The commenter wrote:

I love how everyone thinks they have the answer to this problem. Intellectual humility seems to be in limited supply. “It’s the drugs,” “it’s mental illness,” “it’s the provision of inadequate services.” There are so many imponderables involved in human behavior, our point of departure for any enquiry into its determinants… …should be both skepticism and an acknowledgment of the limitations of human understanding.

As humans, we’re very good at pointing a finger and assigning blame. It deflects our own icky feelings. However, those getting pointed at and blamed feel shame, and shaming someone gets us nowhere.

So, can we do any better than we are now to prevent them? Yes, I still believe we can.

For starters, I agree with Dr. Grohol – locking down guns in a household is common sense. As for parenting, well, I can’t speak from personal experience, but I’ve seen troubled parents turn out well-adjusted kids, and vice versa, but I agree with his assertion in principle.

But kids grow up and move out. Then what?

I don’t want to oversimplify, but for treatment of both kids and adults with severe mental health issues, doesn’t a lot of it come down to communication and collaboration? Parents and doctors and lawmakers and community health nurses and hospital psychiatry teams and teachers and the child/adult in question all working together? Long-term relationships, not revolving-door appointments. Courage. People who aren’t afraid to talk, to question, and to course correct. To have some intellectual humility, rally all of our resources and push the limits of our human understanding. Or, rather, our understanding of one human.

What are your thoughts and practical considerations?

P.s. Here’s a story about parents of a son who had bi-polar depression, and who was killed by Seattle police. They’re lobbying for a bill that allows family members to request a judicial review if emergency in-patient psychiatric treatment has been denied to their loved one with a mental illness. I support this, because it’s another avenue for conversation and collaboration between parties, as opposed to decisions made in a vacuum, often due to cost or expediency.

Travel: Happy Earth Day to You

By Laura Zera 14 Comments

I always forget how amazing it feels to connect to the beauty and wonder of our planet until I get outside for a bit, away from the stores and the cars and the people, and then I notice a bug or a leaf or a flower petal, and time comes to a sudden and crashing halt.

I believe that just as humans are wired for connection to each other, we are grounded by our connection to Earth. In honor of Earth Day, here are two pairs of photos from two of my favorite places, plus an audio clip of the howler monkeys doing what they do best, taken from above the treeline, atop Temple IV at Tikal, Guatemala (or, Jurassic Park, as I like to call it), while waiting for sunrise.

Entrance to Arches Nat'l Park, Utah — Entrance to Arches Nat’l Park, Utah

Yellowstone, Wyoming — Yellowstone Nat’l Park, Wyoming

Okay, one more thing. Here’s a portrait that my husband, photographer Francis Zera, took of Earth Day founder Denis Hayes for a magazine cover a few years back.

Happy Earth Day! Which places on this planet are the most grounding for you?

Photo and video credits for this post: me, me, me, me, me, Francis.

Secrets Revealed: My Interview for Lorna Suzuki

By Laura Zera 12 Comments

As per The Beach Boys, “I’m gettin’ bugged driving up and down this same old strip, I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip.” This week, that place is Lorna Suzuki’s blog. Lorna interviewed me for her Featured Author segment, and I’m super chuffed, especially since it was just two Fridays ago that we met up for dinner in Seattle before she appeared at Emerald City Comicon (ECCC).

If you’re not familiar with Lorna’s work, she’s one of my homeys (Canadian), and is the author of The Imago Chronicles series, the first book from which is being made into a movie. While in Seattle, Lorna was finally able to announce that Don Carmody will be joining with Michy Gustavia to co-produce The Imago Chronicles, A Warrior’s Tale, with production set to start in the fall. Carmody has produced more than 100 films, including Good Will Hunting, the musical Chicago, and the Resident Evil series, so Lorna’s book is in fantastically-good hands. Everyone who knows Lorna is thrilled for her, because she’s a hard-working author who always makes time to connect with people and support other writers in their work.

On Lorna’s blog, I confess to plagiarism, and give away my most secretly-held writing-preparation technique, among other things. In addition to all the linky goodness above, here’s the direct link to my interview. (No commenting over there, so please definitely for sure leave comments here if you are compelled.)

Here’s Lorna, her daughter Nia (who, by the way, co-writes a YA series with her mom), me, and writers Avery Tingle (sitting) and Andrew Beane before we stuffed our faces at Rock Bottom in Seattle last month.

And p.s. When I said up there at the top that I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip, I did NOT mean that the kids who come here aren’t hip. YOU ARE HIP. Maybe not The Tragically Hip, but that’s okay, because if you were The Tragically Hip, I would drive to your house and fangirl all over you, and that could get awkward.

Travel: Sandboarding in Namibia

By Laura Zera 18 Comments

If you’re standing on a sand dune in Swakopmund, Namibia and you’re in a George Mallory state of mind, what do you do? Yes! You put on a helmet, wax up a quarter-inch-thick piece of particle board, lay on it, and rocket down the slope at 80 kilometers per hour!

You think I’m kidding?

I’m not kidding.

Chris Jason and Beth Sarro were definitely channeling George when they founded Alter Action Sandboarding in 1996. In a country with a population density of 2.5 people per square kilometer, they found what they call “the perfect dune:” approximately five kilometers outside of Swakopmund, 100 meters high, and with six faces down which you can plummet.

In the beginning, the only method was face first and on your belly, but Jason and Sarro later introduced stand-up boarding, too—a tweaked version of snowboarding. A handful of other outfits are offering sandboarding in Namibia now, but when I went in 1997, it was Alter Action who took me out for a bit of high-speed insanity.

The trick to this extreme sport is simple: keep your feet up if you want to go fast, and keep the front of your board up if you want to stay on it. On my third or fourth run, in the midst of all my wheeeeeeee-ing, I let the front of my board drop. It hit the sand and stopped; I however, did not. A few sideways somersaults later, I got up and dusted myself off. Luckily, my worst injury was a couple of tablespoons of sand in my eyes, much of which remained stuck to my contact lenses (besides the helmet, we also had elbow pads and gloves). Once my eyes were clear, I climbed the hill again for the remaining runs, and dodged further disaster.

So what does 50 miles an hour feel like when you’re flat on the ground? Well, I’ll tell you. It feels like &*%^#%^%#%^ and %#%^^&*#@@(&%. You get going so fast that every last bit of adrenalin your endocrine system can possibly muster is flying through your body at the same speed or faster. You feel the bumps, and you get air time. You think, “Holy Mother of God, why am I doing this?” And then as soon as you get to the bottom, you want to do it again.

Have you ever tried any extreme sports? (Curling doesn’t count.) And would you try this?

Mental Health: Finding the Help to Thrive

By Laura Zera 4 Comments

Boop! It’s a guest posting week! I hope you’ll hop over.

The whole survive vs. thrive thing is one of the tabs in my brain browser that I’ve been leaving open all the time lately. I’m looking at my own behaviors, developing an awareness of when I step out of thrive mode and back into the survive state. I’m looking at other people’s behaviors, on an individual level, and as a society. I’m reading some good stuff on feelings, emotions and behaviors, and how they can shift entire societies. And I’m developing some ideas around it all.

I won’t go into definitions of survive and thrive here, because they can both mean many different things, and can be explored through many conversations (and I plan to do that here over time). To kick things off, though, I’ve done a guest post on Elaine Stock’s blog “Everyone’s Story” this week, and it’s all about finding the help to thrive. Elaine writes Christian fiction, and she found me through one of my previous mental health posts. As it turns out, her mother also suffered from schizophrenia. I’m honored that she asked me to be a guest on her site, and I’d be tickled if you’d have a visit and say hello to her. Also, please do share your thoughts about survive vs. thrive and asking for help, either here or there!

Namaste, my friends.

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