Interview
tHE cLARITY AND oBJECTIVITY OF eMOTION: AN INTERVIEW WITH aUTHOR jILL sMOLOWE
BY lESLIE mARTINELLI, jESSICA o'sHEA, & kAITLIN zEILMAN
2014
“One of the most valuable lessons that I learned during my decades writing for People, Time, and Newsweek is the power of a well-chosen anecdote,” says Jill Smolowe, author of An Empty Lap and Four Funerals and a Wedding, about her writing process. “It’s the classic ‘show, don’t tell’ approach to storytelling,” she says, “a style that enlivens virtually every type of writing,”
In her two memoirs, Smolowe combines the clarity and objectivity of her journalistic background, while never shying away from the emotional impact that gives such gravity to her work. In a candid interview with Glassworks Magazine, she delves into the specifics of her writing process and the drive she feels to fill the gaps in literature surrounding family and grief.
In her two memoirs, Smolowe combines the clarity and objectivity of her journalistic background, while never shying away from the emotional impact that gives such gravity to her work. In a candid interview with Glassworks Magazine, she delves into the specifics of her writing process and the drive she feels to fill the gaps in literature surrounding family and grief.
Glassworks Magazine (GM): You’ve been a journalist for over thirty years for publications such as Newsweek, Time, and People, yet when it came to your books, you chose memoir over a more objective format. Can you speak to why you made this choice? What was your thought process?
Jill Smolowe (JS): The two times I decided to tackle memoir, it was because I felt there was a book missing from the shelf that would have been helpful to me in my time of distress. So, in each instance, I was propelled by a perspective, a message that I wanted to share. Also, while I’ve collaborated on nonfiction books that demand a more objective approach, the storytelling that goes with memoir is my favorite type of writing. It combines the questioning and probing of journalism, the mining and reflection of essay writing, and the narrative challenges of fiction. It goes back to the message at the heart of the book. As I wrote, I constantly asked myself whether the emerging material served my larger purpose or risked proving a distraction. That’s the same critical eye I bring to news writing.
GM: Your position at People magazine required you to write about crime and sensational events in the news. Did covering these stories give you emotional distance from the tragedies in your own life? Did working on these stories while writing your memoirs help you to step back and refocus on your personal experiences?
JS: One of the most valuable lessons I learned during my decades writing for People, Time and Newsweek is the power of a well-chosen anecdote. It’s the classic “show, don’t tell” approach to storytelling, a style that enlivens virtually every type of writing. When I’m writing a scene that involves a painful moment from my life, my focus is on making the moment come alive so that the reader feels the emotional impact, too. That writing challenge is largely a cerebral exercise. I use journals as a repository for the raw, undistilled stuff that comes more from the heart.
GM: In "Reimagining My Life" in Next Avenue, you speak about how your husband Joe’s illness sidelined the novel you had been working on and how you later chose to begin a new work, your memoir. Some, when tragedy strikes, retreat into fiction or fantasy, but you turned to face your grief head-on. To what extent was catharsis your motivation to write your books?
Jill Smolowe (JS): The two times I decided to tackle memoir, it was because I felt there was a book missing from the shelf that would have been helpful to me in my time of distress. So, in each instance, I was propelled by a perspective, a message that I wanted to share. Also, while I’ve collaborated on nonfiction books that demand a more objective approach, the storytelling that goes with memoir is my favorite type of writing. It combines the questioning and probing of journalism, the mining and reflection of essay writing, and the narrative challenges of fiction. It goes back to the message at the heart of the book. As I wrote, I constantly asked myself whether the emerging material served my larger purpose or risked proving a distraction. That’s the same critical eye I bring to news writing.
GM: Your position at People magazine required you to write about crime and sensational events in the news. Did covering these stories give you emotional distance from the tragedies in your own life? Did working on these stories while writing your memoirs help you to step back and refocus on your personal experiences?
JS: One of the most valuable lessons I learned during my decades writing for People, Time and Newsweek is the power of a well-chosen anecdote. It’s the classic “show, don’t tell” approach to storytelling, a style that enlivens virtually every type of writing. When I’m writing a scene that involves a painful moment from my life, my focus is on making the moment come alive so that the reader feels the emotional impact, too. That writing challenge is largely a cerebral exercise. I use journals as a repository for the raw, undistilled stuff that comes more from the heart.
GM: In "Reimagining My Life" in Next Avenue, you speak about how your husband Joe’s illness sidelined the novel you had been working on and how you later chose to begin a new work, your memoir. Some, when tragedy strikes, retreat into fiction or fantasy, but you turned to face your grief head-on. To what extent was catharsis your motivation to write your books?
JS: I don’t look to memoir writing for catharsis. By the time I sit down to write, I’ve largely processed and digested the emotional experience, and am clear about the perspective, the insights, the message that I want to share. The actual writing affords me the opportunity to dig deeper, unearth new meaning, and extract lessons from a period of chaos. I didn’t write either memoir to “face” my grief. Rather, I made a carefully considered decision to breach my privacy because I felt I had a bit of hard-earned wisdom that might be of use to others who are going through something similar. The unfiltered stuff that I pound out in a journal, however, can be cathartic. And I’ve found an additional benefit to that kind of writing. If months or years down the road I want to reconstruct a moment for a memoir, those entries serve like a reporter’s notebook, providing real-time quotes, detail and access to what I was seeing, thinking and feeling in the moment.
GM: You mention of your inclusion of your personal journals, which are sprinkled throughout your memoir. For example, in Chapter One of Four Funerals and A Wedding, you use narrative to cover the technical aspects of the diagnosis and treatment, but cite from your journal to relay your emotional response. Why did you choose to structure the book in this way?
JS: I wanted readers to understand the emotions I was describing were very much of the moment, not responses I had come to with benefit of reflection. In that particular chapter, I was seeking to convey the surprising clarity I experienced, just hours after learning my husband had leukemia, about what lay ahead. I thought that sharing my journal entry, the heart-guided, undigested raw material I spoke of earlier, would best convey that.
GM: Along those lines of creating emotional clarity, in Four Funerals and a Wedding you chose to keep the technical aspect of your journey to a minimum, whereas in An Empty Lap you include a great deal of research information (laws, regulations, etc.) concerning the adoption process. Both memoirs dealt with extremely personal and emotional subjects, yet you chose to approach them differently. Can you explain the rationale for this change in style?
JS: I had different aims. With Four Funerals, my aim was to enlarge readers’ understanding of how people react when their lives are touched by loss. Rather than tell the familiar how-my-life-fell-apart grief story, I approached the narrative through a different lens: what exactly kept me going as I lost my husband, sister, mother and mother-in-law within a seventeen-month period. I offer my personal, often counterintuitive story both to disrupt common assumptions about the grieving process and to encourage bereaved people (and caregivers, too) to trust their own instincts rather than be guided by a narrow cultural script that insists the only option is to come unglued.
In An Empty Lap, which dramatizes the strains that a prolonged journey to parenthood can put on a couple, I was looking to reassure stressed couples – and their loved ones – that it is normal for marriages to suffer as two people navigate, first, the setbacks and disappointments of infertility, then the confusion and uncertainty of adoption, a process that involves laws and regulations that vary not only from country to country, but state to state. So the kind of detail that you mentioned was an important piece of the story.
GM: You mention of your inclusion of your personal journals, which are sprinkled throughout your memoir. For example, in Chapter One of Four Funerals and A Wedding, you use narrative to cover the technical aspects of the diagnosis and treatment, but cite from your journal to relay your emotional response. Why did you choose to structure the book in this way?
JS: I wanted readers to understand the emotions I was describing were very much of the moment, not responses I had come to with benefit of reflection. In that particular chapter, I was seeking to convey the surprising clarity I experienced, just hours after learning my husband had leukemia, about what lay ahead. I thought that sharing my journal entry, the heart-guided, undigested raw material I spoke of earlier, would best convey that.
GM: Along those lines of creating emotional clarity, in Four Funerals and a Wedding you chose to keep the technical aspect of your journey to a minimum, whereas in An Empty Lap you include a great deal of research information (laws, regulations, etc.) concerning the adoption process. Both memoirs dealt with extremely personal and emotional subjects, yet you chose to approach them differently. Can you explain the rationale for this change in style?
JS: I had different aims. With Four Funerals, my aim was to enlarge readers’ understanding of how people react when their lives are touched by loss. Rather than tell the familiar how-my-life-fell-apart grief story, I approached the narrative through a different lens: what exactly kept me going as I lost my husband, sister, mother and mother-in-law within a seventeen-month period. I offer my personal, often counterintuitive story both to disrupt common assumptions about the grieving process and to encourage bereaved people (and caregivers, too) to trust their own instincts rather than be guided by a narrow cultural script that insists the only option is to come unglued.
In An Empty Lap, which dramatizes the strains that a prolonged journey to parenthood can put on a couple, I was looking to reassure stressed couples – and their loved ones – that it is normal for marriages to suffer as two people navigate, first, the setbacks and disappointments of infertility, then the confusion and uncertainty of adoption, a process that involves laws and regulations that vary not only from country to country, but state to state. So the kind of detail that you mentioned was an important piece of the story.
GM: In your memoirs, you talk about other individuals who were involved in the events being discussed. To what extent (if at all) were these persons fictionalized or composite "characters?" What was the process by which you developed the family and friends you know so well into recognizable facsimiles on the page?
JS: Anyone who appears in my memoirs is a real person. At times, to make vivid why a person’s action or comment touched me so deeply, I needed to supply some context about our relationship. There’s a story about my younger brother, for instance, that involves his making a phone call on my behalf. Readers needed background to understand why that call struck me as such a courageous and loving act. At the same time, I did not want to trespass anybody’s privacy. So, I changed everyone’s first name, except family members (as I make clear in the introduction to each book). I also made a choice that would not appeal to every memoir writer: I shared sensitive material with loved ones and gave them the opportunity to suggest revisions or deletions. As it happens, everyone was very supportive; nothing got deleted. In a few instances, relatives and friends offered recollections that helped me sharpen the material.
GM: In Four Funerals and a Wedding, you describe conversations with persons that gave you comfort or inspiration. How did you select, among the many such conversations, which ones you would include?
JS: Because I often record events in a journal in real time, the entries serve, in effect, as a reporter’s notebook. To reconstruct dialogue, I often found what I needed in those pages, word for word. In some instances, I recorded the essence of an exchange, and I used that summary as a guide to reconstruct dialogue. In other instances, I relied solely on memory, striving to be faithful to the gist of the conversation.
GM: As a certified grief coach, who is surrounded by the sorrows of the bereaved, you must hold yourself at a professional distance. How do you strike a balance between this and a susceptibility to emotionally connect with clients? Has it changed the words you put on the page, or were you able to keep your own thoughts and feelings distinct from others?
JS: The book [Four Funerals and A Wedding] does not reflect any interactions I’ve had with my clients. As far as maintaining a professional distance, that’s very much part of the coaching training and experience. Come to think of it, it’s not unlike the distance you have to maintain as a journalist.
GM: You mention in your books that you have suffered through two bouts of depression in your life. This disease has come into the national spotlight recently with the tragic suicide of Robin Williams. Do you think writers have a moral obligation to open up dialogue, and delve into topics traditionally ignored or misrepresented?
JS: I don’t know that any writer has a moral obligation to tackle a subject, particularly one of a personal nature. The moral obligation lies more in this: if you do choose to take on a subject, you have an obligation to your readers to present the material honestly and not manipulate, misrepresent or distort the “facts.” I think it’s helpful that Robin Williams’s sad death has inspired people to open up about their own experiences with depression.
JS: Anyone who appears in my memoirs is a real person. At times, to make vivid why a person’s action or comment touched me so deeply, I needed to supply some context about our relationship. There’s a story about my younger brother, for instance, that involves his making a phone call on my behalf. Readers needed background to understand why that call struck me as such a courageous and loving act. At the same time, I did not want to trespass anybody’s privacy. So, I changed everyone’s first name, except family members (as I make clear in the introduction to each book). I also made a choice that would not appeal to every memoir writer: I shared sensitive material with loved ones and gave them the opportunity to suggest revisions or deletions. As it happens, everyone was very supportive; nothing got deleted. In a few instances, relatives and friends offered recollections that helped me sharpen the material.
GM: In Four Funerals and a Wedding, you describe conversations with persons that gave you comfort or inspiration. How did you select, among the many such conversations, which ones you would include?
JS: Because I often record events in a journal in real time, the entries serve, in effect, as a reporter’s notebook. To reconstruct dialogue, I often found what I needed in those pages, word for word. In some instances, I recorded the essence of an exchange, and I used that summary as a guide to reconstruct dialogue. In other instances, I relied solely on memory, striving to be faithful to the gist of the conversation.
GM: As a certified grief coach, who is surrounded by the sorrows of the bereaved, you must hold yourself at a professional distance. How do you strike a balance between this and a susceptibility to emotionally connect with clients? Has it changed the words you put on the page, or were you able to keep your own thoughts and feelings distinct from others?
JS: The book [Four Funerals and A Wedding] does not reflect any interactions I’ve had with my clients. As far as maintaining a professional distance, that’s very much part of the coaching training and experience. Come to think of it, it’s not unlike the distance you have to maintain as a journalist.
GM: You mention in your books that you have suffered through two bouts of depression in your life. This disease has come into the national spotlight recently with the tragic suicide of Robin Williams. Do you think writers have a moral obligation to open up dialogue, and delve into topics traditionally ignored or misrepresented?
JS: I don’t know that any writer has a moral obligation to tackle a subject, particularly one of a personal nature. The moral obligation lies more in this: if you do choose to take on a subject, you have an obligation to your readers to present the material honestly and not manipulate, misrepresent or distort the “facts.” I think it’s helpful that Robin Williams’s sad death has inspired people to open up about their own experiences with depression.
