Beginnings: The Goal of the Memoir

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Cate Macabe

When I first met AJ Jackson, her reason for wanting a book written about her life was to leave a record behind of the things she’d done in the business of private investigating, repossessing, and process serving.

“I’m not getting any younger,” she said. “If I wait too long, it won’t get done. And I want my children and grandchildren to know what I’ve gone through.”

After I finished the drafts of a few chapters of her adventures (that later became This New Mountain), we both thought the memoir might appeal to others outside her family. It seems these chapters captured the same excitement I felt when I first listened to AJ tell her own stories.

So I shifted gears. The audience for the memoir would be much wider. The book’s appeal would even reach beyond her circle of friends and business associates to include those who read crime novels and have an interest in the profession of private investigation. Someone who wants to know how the mind of a private eye works (and the tricks they use) will want to read the book. Baby boomers will also enjoy the memoir, as will anyone who likes to read about ordinary people working in unconventional jobs. If you want to know the ins and outs of how a real repo-man (or woman) works – don’t watch the TV show – get AJ Jackson’s memoir. And if you’re looking for encouragement to step out of your comfort zone, this is a good book to read.

When we broadened our audience, AJ also added to her goal for This New Mountain. She wanted to encourage others to face their fears – if she could do all the things she did (while being scared to death), she wanted others to know they could do the same.

In one interview AJ told me, “What I’d like to get across to the reader is to never give up. Whatever you’d like to try in life, just give it a shot. Because you’ll never know if you don’t try.” Like I’ve said before, she thinks everyone just needs a little bit of courage.

Ultimately, the goal of any book is to tell a story the best it can be told. Through these twelve years of writing, revising and reworking, questioning and listening, I’ve done all I can to accomplish that one major goal and stay true to AJ’s own intentions.

If you were to write a memoir, what would your goals be?

Beginnings: The Voice of a Memoir

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Cate Macabe

When authors start out on their writing journey, they’re often told to find their Voice – that thing that makes their writing unique among thousands of other voices in print. “Finding” isn’t really the right word, though, as if they had it once and then lost it somehow.

Developing an authorial voice is more what a writer does. It’s a long process, and it takes reading the masters in many genres. It takes sitting down and writing for years, getting comfortable with the true sound of words and cadence, experimenting with complexity of language, playing with the rules. When she “finds” this voice – this style – it flows naturally in a story and is found throughout an author’s body of work.

Narrative voice is something else found in fiction – the voice of the point of view character or narrator that carries the reader through the story. The voice of the author and narrator are tied together. (For a more detailed discussion of authorial and narrative voice, go to this article by Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake).

To make This New Mountain as genuine as possible for the reader, I put aside my own developed voice and my own style in favor of writing the memoir in AJ Jackson’s voice. Doing so wasn’t as difficult as I first thought it would be. I listened to hours of AJ’s recorded stories (often more than once), had lengthy phone calls with her several times a month, and met with her on a regular basis. While stringing words into sentences and sentences into chapters, I heard AJ clearly speaking to me in my head. My goal as I wrote was for the reader to also hear her – as if she was sitting across the table, sharing a pot of coffee while telling her adventures in her own straightforward, unpolished style.

I hope friends and family will recognize the person they love in the pages of This New Mountain. And I hope readers who are new to Vinnie Ann “AJ” Jackson will quickly learn to love this country-wise woman with her unique voice.

You will find a bit of me in there, too – my own voice woven into the fabric of description throughout the book. I couldn’t help seeping in. After all these years, AJ is a part of me the way the lives of all true friends become entwined.

Of the authors you enjoy reading, and keep going back to, is it their style of writing, their storylines, or their characters you like the most?

Beginnings: Choosing a Book Title

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Cate Macabe

Along with the first tentative outline for the memoir This New Mountain, I brainstormed a list of titles, thinking if I had that settled it would help me move forward with the book. This list included Born to Serve, Liberating Process, Liable to Confound, and In Lieu of Surrender. I thought these were clever, catchy titles considering many of the stories in the book had some kind of connection to the laws of the land – thank goodness none of them made it past the first stage. There was only one – The Amazing Life of Ann Jackson – that I seriously considered. But none of these choices truly grabbed hold of me and said, “This is it, this is the one.” They didn’t speak about AJ’s past or her future or her now. They just didn’t feel right.

In my own experience with picking a title for my fiction writing, I either know right away what it is or within a few chapters after the story gets going. So I didn’t worry when no concrete title surfaced for AJ Jackson’s memoir. One would come to me in time.

As usually happens when I write without a title, there came that day I just couldn’t write another word. Seeing an empty space on the title page above my name and in the header/footer made me freeze up. Like having an odd type of writer’s block. I sat and stared at the page for the longest time and could not put one more word to paper (or screen).

But I needed to move forward, and that’s when I came up with a solution without actually choosing a working title. I needed something either bland or outlandish, but not something I would grow attached to or mind tossing out when a real title came to mind. Don’t ask me why (because I don’t have an answer), but within a few minutes of realizing I needed such a thing, I had my throwaway title: Dirty Underwear. No, you’re not allowed to ask why.

So the book started out as Dirty Underwear: A Memoir of AJ Jackson. Catchy title. Now I could at least finish the chapter I was working on when writer’s block hit, and move on.

It wasn’t too long after that, while searching the web for quotes I wanted to include with each chapter name, I found this:

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. ~ Ursula Le Guin

And there it was. I had found the true title of AJ Jackson’s memoir. It embodied what all the others lacked – strength in today, while suggesting movement and something that existed before.

Goodbye Dirty Underwear, hello (thank goodness) This New Mountain.

Dirty Underwear is still the title I use when I don’t know a story or its characters well enough to come up with one right away. It works simply because it doesn’t fit and doesn’t have to, and because giving it up isn’t a hard thing to do. I don’t normally go a long period of time without penning a title. Maybe my mind works subconsciously to come up with a suitable one just because it doesn’t want the alternative attached to my stories. Whatever the reason, my throwaway title works every time.

Do you have a mind trick you use to fool yourself (like setting your clock ahead so you won’t be late), or am I the only strange one out there?

Live More, Fear Less: Deep Water

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Cate Macabe

This is the first of my Fear Less Friday posts. Writing This New Mountain and seeing how AJ Jackson faced her fears everyday has helped me deal with my own fears. With these Friday posts I plan to talk about the things that grab hold of us and keep us from living fully, and in doing so I hope to help others take a look at what makes them fearful and maybe inspire them to take a step onto another path.

Here is a photo of me on the coast of Maine with a treasure I found washed up on shore. Seeing the not quite picked-clean bones of this huge fish reminded me of similar encounters at a time when I was young and innocent, playing in the sand with my silver spoons and plastic bucket, trying to dig to China. Sand crabs would skitter about while I dug deep holes that filled with ocean water seeping in under the beach. I remember the shield-like remains of a spiny horseshoe crab with its stiff dagger tail. And I remember watching two men drag a large thing through the surf and onto the beach. A sleek, grey, smooth-skinned body with a long tail, and side and dorsal fins. I was little, and the thing was huge and terrifying, and it was a shark.

That creature laying on the sand made me wonder what else swam out there in the deep, among the rushing waves, just beyond the shore. What else was out there that I couldn’t see? Close enough for swimmers to capture, and close enough to swim among the swimmers.

I decided I didn’t want to be one of those deep-water-swimming-with-creatures kinds of people. I’m perfectly happy to watch the waves for hours, feel my toes leave impressions in the hard sand, smell the salt in the air, hear the gulls cry. At peace with the forever cycle of sea meeting land in a rush and swell, a falling back, and a reaching out once more. The sea and me, we have an understanding. I’ll even splash in ankle-deep surf. But I’m not afraid of drowning – I can swim just fine. No, it’s the things in the water I can do without. And I’ve always been okay with this perfectly logical fear I have.

And then I took my oldest daughter on a Caribbean cruise for her 21^st birthday. We explored Mayan ruins in Cancun, hiked through a waterfall in Jamaica, visited a place called Hell. It was all wonderfully normal, until she wanted to swim with stingrays. AND she wanted me to go with her. How sweet of her to think of me. The water would be warm and clear, she said. Clear enough to see all those creatures that live in the ocean.

In doing research for This New Mountain I came across the following quote by Ambrose Redmoon:

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

At the time of the cruise, I hadn’t been introduced to AJ Jackson and her head-on approach to dealing with fear, but I knew deep down if I let go of this chance to share something remarkable with my daughter, I would always regret it. And a part of me actually did want to – [shudder] – swim with stingrays.

I talked myself into, and out of, doing it dozens of times. I was still talking to myself as I followed my daughter down the ladder on the side of the sightseeing boat. I changed my mind again, but someone was already on the ladder above me coming down. My heart pounding, I tried not to look at the water below as I stepped onto the bottom rung. I had been breathing deeply for a good fifteen minutes before this to keep from hyperventilating. I took a few more slow, even breaths, told myself to just do it, and dropped into the warm ocean. I expected to have to push off the bottom and swim to the surface but instead I touched solid “ground” after a few feet. The water resting over this pristine reef was only armpit-deep. The sand spread out at my feet soft and white and unmarred as far as I could see. No shells, no seaweed, no creatures, nothing but sand. It was as if someone had swept it clean just for me. This wasn’t so bad. I could do this.

A murmur started from a group of people bobbing about farther away from the boat and me, and closer to the open sea. Then shadows slid through the water, dark cloaks winging toward us. I screamed along with everyone else – tenor and soprano voices mixed together, men and women alike.

But these stingrays were not there to hurt us. They were more like dogs racing in for the treats the tourist boat always brought along to bring them close. The rays hugged our legs and spun around us. My daughter, the adventurous child, hugged one back. I stood as still as possible and took photos of rippling cloaks and tiger-eyes unblinking. Soon the creatures turned and swept back the way they came.

I still don’t like deep water, won’t go in it, preferring slow walks along the edge of my mind and the surf. But now I can say I swam with stingrays – and I never have to do it again.

As AJ likes to tell me, “You just have to have a little courage.”

Is there a fear that keeps you from doing something you’ve always wanted to do? Is it time you took a few deep breaths, pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, and jumped in?

Beginnings: Dealing with Comfort Zones

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Cate Macabe

I wasn’t the first to suggest AJ Jackson’s “adventures” would make a good book. Nearly everyone she came in contact with said the same thing. One of the major appeals of her stories is that she’s a regular person in an unconventional job doing things most people would find uncomfortable, even frightening. Don’t we all wish we had that kind of courage?

When we first met, we both worked for the same attorney – AJ as a private investigator/process server, and I as a secretary. She came in several times a week to pick up and drop off documents, and while she was in the office, she shared her newest adventures. While I listened, I would shake my head and say things like, “you’re kidding” and “my goodness” and “that’s crazy” in response to her latest I-almost-got-bit story or I-almost-got-shot story or I-almost-got-[fill in the blank] story.

After one especially exciting storytelling session, I offered to write her book. She didn’t say “yes” right away. When she finally did tell me she wanted to give it a try, my stomach twisted in knots. Writing AJ’s memoir would be a challenge. First, this was not my memoir, these were not my memories. And second, I wrote fiction (specifically science fiction and fantasy) and not nonfiction. But I’d committed to doing it, so I pushed through my doubts and fears, and began a practical approach to writing my first memoir.

AJ recorded her stories on a tape recorder, then I listened to her voice and let it guide me as I retold her adventures. The next six years were one cycle after another of outlining, research, writing and rewriting – with AJ proofing – and then more writing and revising. I finished a first complete draft in 2006. A professional edit of the manuscript brought the memoir back into seemingly endless cycles of digging deeper, reworking, rearranging, and rewriting. After six more years, the manuscript was as ready as we could make it for publishing.

And that’s where This New Mountain is now, in the hands of the publisher and waiting for (what we hope is) just one more round of proofing before going off to the printer and then distribution.

Though I wasn’t the first person to say AJ’s adventures would make a good book, I’m pretty sure I was the first to offer to write that book. Without her example of a no-comfort-zone life and stepping out of my own comfort zone, I never would have had the chance to know the exceptional woman who is Vinnie Ann “AJ” Jackson or start on my own publishing adventure.

Have you ever stepped out of your comfort zone – and found a treasure because of it?

Welcome to the Home of This New Mountain!

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Cate Macabe

After working for twelve years putting together AJ Jackson’s memoir, AJ and I are excited to announce the upcoming publication of This New Mountain by Casa de Snapdragon Publishing.

Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

“Just go ahead and shoot me,” I told the sneering young man who held a gun pointed at my chest. “I’m an old lady and I’m tired. You’d be doing me a favor.” I wasn’t all that old, but I was cranky. “I don’t want to die in some nursing home, so why don’t you just go ahead and pull the trigger.” I stared the guy right in the eyes and waited. His baby-blues narrowed, his forehead furrowed. He didn’t shoot, so I turned my back on him and continued hooking up the rear of his pickup to my tow truck. It had been a helluva long day so far, a helluva life….

Like most private investigators, AJ Jackson has more than one foot in the fire to make ends meet – driving a tow truck and serving legal documents for local law firms. But not every PI is a mother of four, a grandmother of ten, an ex-gun dealer and former mental patient, or a descendant of a great Choctaw chief. This is a memoir of Vinnie Ann “AJ” Jackson, a country girl with a go-to-hell attitude who must face her fears in order to keep her sanity and make a future for herself.