Writing a Memoir in Essays, with Rona Maynard
Just because we don’t know where a writing project is going, doesn’t mean we can’t work on it with intent.
Rona Maynard didn’t set out with the intent to write a memoir. In fact, what is now her latest book Starter Dog started as a series of Facebook posts, then grew into so much more.
But those posts wouldn’t have existed if Rona hadn’t been looking for something to write—and if she hadn’t experienced a change in her perspective.
Writing a Memoir in Essays, with Rona Maynard
Listen to learn:
- About writing memoir in essays
- How to create structure for memoir in essays
- How to turn something that isn’t a book into a book
- How being grounded in our senses can help our writing
Here’s a sneak peek of today’s episode…
[03:04] I just wanted to figure out this great, big, complicated problem. And I thought it was all going to happen in my head.
[10:48] There are the ones who sit down and eat it up, and there are the ones who read a few pages every day, and they read parts of it aloud to their spouse.
[12:45] But here I was with all these little pieces. It was like making a quilt, and you don't have a design. You've just got a bunch of triangles and squares. And, where is that pattern?
[16:21] Plus I thought, “Well, I've been an editor for all these years, so I should be able to figure this out.”
[19:24] The world is not waiting for my book, or your book, or anybody's book. We are just compelled to write these books.
[22:02] You start with a lot of stuff. And then you pull back and back and back and you just keep narrowing the focus.
[30:24] Most dog books end with the death of the dog. And I sure didn't want mine to end that way, but it had to end somehow. And where on earth was it going to end?
Links from today’s episode:
Writing a Memoir in Essays, with Rona Maynard: The Resilient Writers Radio Show -- Full Episode Transcript
Intro:
Well, hey there, writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas, and this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. Because—let's face it—the writing life has its ups and downs, and we wanna not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
This podcast is for writers who love books, and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who wanna learn and grow in their craft, and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books, and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them, writers who wanna spend more time in that flow state, writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community in this crazy roller coaster ride we call “the writing life.” We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives, and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, writer, I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda Douglas:
Well, hey there. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm really excited today. I have someone with me whose work I've been familiar with for a long time, Rona Maynard, and you may know her name as well. She's the author of the acclaimed memoir, My Mother's Daughter. And she had a long, stellar career in magazines as a writer and editor, including a decade at the helm of Canada's premier women's magazine, Chatelaine. And she lives in downtown Toronto with her husband of now over 50 years, and a rescue mutt called Casey. And so, this book is called Starter Dog, and I love this subtitle, Rona: My Path to Joy, Belonging, and Loving This World.
Rona Maynard:
Thank you.
Rhonda :
<Laugh> Welcome. So, tell me how this book started. How did you end up writing this at all?
Rona:
I have been adrift looking for a big project that would replace the sense of profound engagement that I got from my previous book and from my work at Chatelaine, and I was coming up dry. It had been years and years since my last book came out. When my husband talked me into adopting the dog who turned out to be Casey, I thought, “this is really nuts. A dog is not going to solve this complicated creative problem that I have.”
And then I went out—well, first I should tell you, I only said yes to the dog out of love for my husband. I really didn't want a dog. I did not want fur, I did not want barf, I did not want restrictions on my travel routines. I just wanted to figure out this great, big, complicated problem. And I thought it was all going to happen in my head. Then off I went into my familiar neighbourhood with Casey beside me, and everything looked different because he was there.
Rhonda :
Mm.
Rona:
Because, I was not just powering through anymore. I was stopping when he stopped. Male dogs are forever peeing and marking.
Rhonda :
Oh, tell me about it. Yeah.
Rona:
Yes <laugh>, don't adopt a male dog if you want to make time <laugh>. And while he was doing his thing, I would look around me and I would notice a butterfly resting on the grass. I would notice two insects having a fight to the death, a bee navigating a flower. I was having all these little Emily Dickinson moments, just on an ordinary day in downtown Toronto. Plus I was meeting people.
Rhonda :
Yes. So many interesting people.
Rona:
They were fascinating people I would never have met without a dog because I'm one of those folks who are always lost in their own thoughts, and I would just stride along and look right through whoever was approaching me, unless they happened to be wearing a particularly interesting outfit.
Rhonda :
Right <laugh>.
Rona:
So, a dog changed all that. I would meet everybody from a juggler practising an act to an Italian tourist who taught me to say “good boy”in Italian, to street people, quite a lot of street people.
Rhonda :
And you know whom I love the most, and actually it was quite sad at the end, was Milk-Bone Man. Can you talk about Milk-Bone Man?
Rona:
Yes. I miss him to this day. Milk-Bone Man was a very tall black gentleman who wore black from head to toe, and intricately carved rings on every finger, and he rode around in an electric wheelchair, giving out treats to the neighbourhood dogs.
Rhonda :
But he owned cats. That's the thing.
Rona:
<Laugh> Well, I think he did. You know, now that he's gone, I am trying to revisit every conversation with him in my mind. What exactly did he tell me? You know, we said so little in these interchanges on the sidewalk.
It was all about the joy of meeting him, and his giving Casey the treat, which was complicated because Casey is a bit of a wild man, and was leaping all over the place when JP held up the treat for Casey. And he was in the beginning a little bit afraid, more than a little bit afraid, that Casey would tip him out of the chair.
Rhonda :
Right.
Rona:
And if that ever happened, I could not get him back in. He was a big guy. But every time I saw him, it was a few minutes of pure joy, because this man had so few expectations from his day, as far as I could tell. It was all about rolling around and seeing who he could see and making dogs happy.
Rhonda :
<Laugh> That's so great.
Rona:
If you can make dogs happy, you are going to absolutely enchant the human.
Rhonda :
That's gotta be a good day.
Rona:
It's a great, great day. And of course, he would have loved to have a dog of his own, but he didn't think he could handle that. He had wonderful long fingers, and I never got to ask him if he played an instrument, whether it was the guitar or the piano, ‘cause he had the hands for either one.
Rhonda :
Mm-hmm. Wow. I mean, that's quite a shock. You agreed to have this dog sort of, you know, really not for yourself, but for your husband, and you get over all the things you're worried about. And then the dog just transforms your world. It transforms your worldview, and how you are in the world. So, that was unexpected. I'm sure you didn't think, like, if I'd gone back and asked you 15 years ago, you wouldn't have thought, “okay, those are my dog memoir years. I'm gonna be writing.”
Rona:
No, absolutely not. I thought, “I'm finally pet free.” We had had quite a few cats, and although I rather liked having cats, they made a big mess. They clawed at all the furniture, they left fur on everything. And, I liked being able to go away without making a plan for animals. And it's even more complicated, of course, with a dog. 'Cause you can't just have somebody come in, to feed a dog.
So, the way I looked at it, in the pre-Casey years, it really was all about me, and what I thought, and what I knew, and what happened to me in company with other people who were knowing and thinking. It was a very cerebral kind of existence. And a dog makes it more sensory.
Rhonda :
Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Rona:
So, I think it is very good practice for a writer. I realise not every writer wants a dog. Some are allergic, some can't have a dog for various reasons, some have been afraid of dogs all their lives, but a dog beside you out in the world can get you really looking.
Rhonda :
Really engaged.
Rona:
Yeah. Looking and experiencing. And, I think deep looking is invaluable.
Rhonda :
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. That's what we do, isn't it? Yeah. You know, I think I did not pay attention to the fact that the dog memoir is a subgenre of memoir that even exists. And then last year I interviewed Helen Humphreys for the Writer's Festival here, who did And a Dog Called Fig.
Rona:
Oh, yes, I have that one.
Rhonda :
And it has a similar quality, which is, you’re reading a book, as in Starter Dog. You're reading a book where you are with the personality of the writer as they go from being someone who still is cerebral, who still is a thinking person, but who lands like, very heavily in this sensory world, in their own body, and navigating the world in front of them. And it's quite meditative. I read this through in one sitting. Like, it's a really good read, Rona.
Rona:
Oh, thank you, Rhonda.
Rhonda :
I ate it up.
Rona:
That was what I was hoping, and I find that people are going in two directions with this book. There are the ones who sit down and eat it up, and there are the ones who read a few pages every day, and they read parts of it aloud to their spouse.
Rhonda :
Oh, that's great.
Rona:
And they laugh, and it takes them a very long time to get through the book. And they say, “well, when I really like a book, I wanna read it slowly.”
Rhonda :
Wow.
Rona:
Go figure <laugh>. It's a compliment.
Rhonda :
It is. So, this book is written in—it's a memoir in essays. Can you say a little bit about that and how you came to the structure of it? Because I work a lot with writers who are working in memoir, who, one of their biggest struggles is, how the heck do I structure this thing?
Rona:
Well, I better backtrack to tell you how it really started. Because the process was very interesting. It was a series of Facebook posts that became progressively more intricate. The first ones were only a paragraph or so, and people responded very warmly to them. So, I wrote more and more, and then people started telling me that I had a book.
Rhonda :
And you didn't know you had a book.
Rona:
No, because I thought, “I'm just shuffling around with a dog.” And the most influential of these people was a former colleague of mine from Chatelaine, Kim Pittaway, who is now directing an MFA program at King's College, and I respect her greatly. And if Kim says it's a book, well, it very likely is. But here I was with all these little pieces. It was like making a quilt, and you don't have a design. You've just got a bunch of triangles and squares. And, where is that pattern?
I had read an interview with Margaret Renkl, whose first book I very much enjoyed, Late Migrations, I recommend it highly. And Margaret said that when she was trying to structure her book, she put all the chapters on the floor.
Rhonda :
Oh, I do that with poetry.
Rona:
And she rearranged them. Well, I would've needed a gymnasium.
Rhonda :
<Laugh> That's true.
Rona:
Plus, I didn't wanna be crawling around on my bad knees, right? There were just too many tiny little pieces.
Rhonda :
Yeah, I can see what you mean.
Rona:
One thing that helped, and I've recommended it to many writer friends for finding a structure, is Scrivener.
Rhonda :
Okay. Yes.
Rona:
I don't know if you have used it, but Scrivener has this wonderful feature that is worth learning Scrivener for, it's called “the binder.” And you can look down, and you can see the whole shape. You can see everything that you've got. Plus, you can shove stuff down at the bottom that you don't know what to deal with.
So, if I was working with a bunch of little word documents, or a big word file, I would've struggled for a lot longer than I did. I tried to organise it into sections, and in the beginning I had five, which is too many. If you've got five sections in a book, it's highly likely you've got too many. I think you should probably not have more than three.
Rhonda :
It came out at three, right?
Rona:
I came out at three, and—
Rhonda :
About 12 pieces per, something like that?
Rona:
Something like that. And the subtitle really helped me to organise it as well.
Rhonda :
Okay.
Rona:
I'm a big believer in subtitles.
Rhonda :
I love this subtitle. It's so true.
Rona:
Oh, I'm so glad that you do, because I worked damn hard on that subtitle <laugh>. I worked for a very long time. And once I figured out what the subtitle was, I showed it to my husband: Joy, Belonging, and Loving This World. And he said, “well, those could be three parts of your book. One is joy, one is belonging, one is loving this world.” Now that I look at the book and read it in conjunction with the subtitle, it just seems so obvious to me.
Rhonda :
It always does after the fact, doesn't it? <laugh>
Rona:
Why was I banging my head on the wall for so long? If I'd hired somebody to work with me on the book I might have hit on it faster, but I was much too cheap. Plus I thought, “well, I've been an editor for all these years, so I should be able to figure this out.” And in the end, I did.
Rhonda :
You know, the thing about an editor is they have that emotional distance from the project that we don't have.
Rona:
Yes. Everybody needs one. Now you said, and this is so interesting to me, you said it's a memoir in essays. Why do you say it's a memoir in essays?
Rhonda :
I think just because it's a piece and a piece and a piece, and there's movement in the sections and movements across the whole. But yeah, I think about the, what was it called? I'm thinking about the one about Adrian, your husband's brother.
Rona:
He was his cousin. Yes.
Rhonda :
Yeah, his cousin, and he came and fed the dog, and that didn't go well. What I love about the book overall is it does have things that all good memoirs do, which is, “look, here ostensibly is a book about this one subject, woman gets dog. This is a book about woman gets dog.” But it’s not. Your marriage is in here, the relationships with your neighbours, and how you think about your life. It ends up being quite existential, in the way of all good memoirs, you know?
Rona:
Oh, thank you. Well, I better confess that the term “memoir in essays” has often perplexed me, because I think sometimes people will call a book memoir and essays and it's just a bunch of things that they've written slapped inside a book.
Rhonda :
A bunch of things, yeah. But this is more than that.
Rona:
I've had discussions with writers that I very much respect <laugh>, who say, “memoir and essay is a beautiful thing, Rona.” And you are far from the first person who is the first discerning reader who has told me that's what this is. But that's the last thing I thought I wanted to do, 'cause I wanted to tell a story with a throughline, and I guess in the end I did.
Rhonda :
You did. No, for sure.
Rona:
But I wanted that sense of making pieces and sharing them with the world as I went, because the reaction motivated me to keep going. The hardest thing about being a writer, I think, is that sense that nobody really cares about what you're doing.
Rhonda :
Right.
Rona:
There's a poem I love by Mark Strand, that's a poem in a bunch of parts, and it's called Five Dogs.
Rhonda :
Oh, I know that one.
Rona:
Do you know that one? And he says, “what's another poet in the end?” And I cannot tell you how many times I think, “what's another poet in the end?”
The world is not waiting for my book, or your book, or anybody's book. We are just compelled to write these books, and once we send them on their way into the world, there will be people who are boundlessly glad that they found our books. There probably will not be as many of those people as we would like.
Rhonda :
<Laugh> Yeah.
Rona:
But they will be there.
Rhonda :
So true. I mean, part of what I enjoyed about the book is Casey. I'm a dog person, so I've got Mr. Darcy who's asleep at my feet here. And getting to know Casey, the character that is Casey, and your relationship with Casey, but then also there's a lot of your marriage in here. And during the pandemic, you celebrated 50 years and of course, a couple negotiates around a dog, don't they? And you say, you didn't intend to have the dog at all. You only agreed to kind of, you know, for—
Rona
For love.
Rhonda:
Yeah. For love as a, “Oh, I guess this is what I need to do in my marriage right now is say yes to a dog.” Were you conscious of that? Was that a thread you were working with through the book as—
Rona:
The thread of the marriage?
Rhonda :
Yeah. The thread of your marriage?
Rona:
Not when I started, no. When I started, they were all stories about my husband—pardon me, about my dog <laugh>. And then Paul became a larger and larger character, because once I realised that it was in fact a book, I must have written about 25 versions of a prologue in English. There was a lot more about the angst that was going on in the marriage, at that time. And it was really more than I needed. More than anybody needed.
Rhonda :
<laugh> Right. You've just described every memoir ever right there, Rona <laugh>.
Rona:
Yes. You start with a lot of stuff. And then you pull back and back and back and you just keep narrowing the focus. One thing I learned while writing this book is that writers, well, this writer, anyway, will produce a lot of anecdotes, vignettes, chapters, that say essentially the same thing.
Rhonda :
Yes.
Rona:
And you don't need all those. Just use the best ones.
Rhonda :
Yes.
Rona:
Yeah. Exactly. And if you've got a vignette that does not add anything new to the story, it's gotta go.
Rhonda :
That's the ruthless editor in you. Not everybody does that so easily. People like to hold on to their little , you know?
Rona:
There are chapters that I really worked hard on, that no longer exist. Well, they do exist on my hard drive. I don't throw stuff away.
Rhonda :
But they're not in the book. Wow.
Rona:
But they're not in the book. I've got tons of stuff that's not in the book.
Rhonda :
Okay.
Rona:
And in the editing stages of the book, I remember thinking, “well, those things that I cut can be repurposed as companion essays for the book.” Which sounds like a good idea, but the truth is, not very many of them have the stuff. They are very well written, line for line, but they're not offering to readers enough that the reader will be glad she or he read.
Rhonda :
Right.
Rona:
And it really is all about their reader, in the end. It's all about you when you're trying to get started, and you just have to believe. You just have to fall in love with what you're writing.
Rhonda :
In the end, the book has to work for the reader.
Rona:
It does.
Rhonda :
Hard stuff. Hard choices.
Rona:
Yeah. And then my editor cut some more, but most of the heavy cutting I had already done myself.
Rhonda :
Okay. And what's the process like? I haven't done this, but I do have someone that I'm working with right now who had a blog. And so she's taking blog posts and working with blog posts in a memoir. And I imagine working with Facebook posts, you write the Facebook post, you have no idea you're working on a book. Maybe you've got 10, a dozen, Facebook posts, and now you are working on a book. What was the work to take a Facebook post and turn it into a piece for the book? What kind of work did you have to do to shape it for a book?
Rona:
Okay. Well, the first thing I did was copy it and put it in a Word document. I find that little box on Facebook very easy to composing, because it's so friendly. It doesn't even feel like writing.
Rhonda :
That's true.
Rona:
It’s just like a note, really a little squid. But then when I look at it as a Word document and I read it over, I see that there are lots of points that call for elaboration. And what makes writing interesting to me is the interplay of feelings and ideas. The Facebook posts just kind of moved directly from one thing to the next thing, to the conclusion of this little episode on the walk. But when I started working toward the book, I would allow memories to come in, and little bits of poetry. I'm very inspired by poetry, as perhaps you noticed.
Rhonda :
I did. Yeah. That was great.
Rona:
And art, there is some art in the book. There used to be more, but I cut almost all of it. I think the reader likes a sense of cross print, in a piece of prose. I'm not talking about digressions here, but about the mind in conversation with the world and with previous experience.
Rhonda :
I think of that as like, you're reading along and then all of a sudden you're down deep into something, you know?
Rona:
Yes. And I'm not going to go down deep in a Facebook post, because the form is so constrained.
Rhonda :
It's also open. You're talking to, in theory, your friends, but some of them—I don't know about your Facebook friends, but some of them, I'm like,” I have no idea where I met you.”
Rona:
I'm the same. I don’t know. I encountered this very interesting tribe on Facebook, and I don't know who they all are, and they're all over the place. Which is very interesting.
Rhonda :
Yeah. And so it changes, the form changes the content, doesn't it? So, someone way smarter than me said that, that was Marshall McLuhan. The Medium is the Massage. But in this case, there's such an intimacy to the book that you don't get from a Facebook post, 'cause the Facebook post is kind of much more wide open. And this felt like, you know, a closed conversation from one dog lover to another. Although, I don't know if you need to be a dog lover to read the book. I think dog lovers would pick it up, automatically, maybe, 'cause we're those kinds of people, but it's about more than that.
Rona:
Quite a few people who are not dog lovers have enjoyed the book. And some of 'em are cat people.
Rhonda :
Cat people. Wow. Who are those? Okay <laugh>. But you're also a cat-verse. So, you get to the point where you've got something that you think is a book, and you're working on it as a book, you're shaping it into a book, and you're working with this. Were you consciously working with the idea of memoir and essays at that point?
Rona:
No, because I thought I didn't like memoir and essays. I thought memoir and essays was a cop-out for people who didn't know how to tell a story.
Rhonda :
Are you eating your words now?
Rona:
Well, I guess maybe I am. The truth is, it's a very individual thing, how you name something. I have loved some books that I suppose were memoir and essay, and that's not what I called them. But maybe someone else would, and Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl is, I guess, a memoir and essays.
Rhonda :
I'll look for that. I mean, I guess I would say it's not like they stand on their own. They move in relationship to each other, which you want them to do to be a satisfying read. It's really interesting to me how we finally decide in our process, what the structure of something is. Because it could be a hundred different things, and then ultimately, you know, it starts to kind of coalesce into something. And there you are, you've got a shape, and that's it.
Rona:
Well, I ran aground with this one. I had taken it as far as I could, and I sent it to my agent, and she thought it didn't have enough of a structure.
Rhonda :
Okay.
Rona:
And this was terrible, terrible news.
Rhonda :
Of course.
Rona:
Most dog books end with the death of the dog. And I sure didn't want mine to end that way, but it had to end somehow. And where on earth was it going to end? So I put it aside, and Covid happened.
And during covid, I found the ending to the book, because in that pause that we all came to, there was a very significant death in my circle, and Casey's. We lost JP. My husband and I celebrated our 50th anniversary in lockdown, all dressed up.
Rhonda :
I love that. And you went for a walk with Casey.
Rona:
We did, on the campus where we met.
Rhonda :
Great.
Rona:
And it was a lovely way to almost end the book. If I had tried to brain-smash my way to an ending before covid, I don't think it would've been as satisfying. I believe there are times when you've just got to put it down, just drop it. And if there is enough there, it will tell you, eventually, where it needs to go.
Rhonda :
Yeah. Your subconscious is still kind of working.
Rona:
It's still working on it. And I'm glad now that it unfolded the way it did, but honestly, I think if you read it now, it probably reads as if it flowed easily. And it looks kind of inevitable, which is how I wanted it to look, but oh boy, was it ever not.
Rhonda :
But it didn't, for a while.
Rona:
I mean, I thought this was going to be such a simple little story to write. But it wasn't simple and it wasn't little.
Rhonda :
And, you know, you could have just abandoned it. A lot of writers have that almost-finished manuscript sitting in a drawer. They got some feedback, didn't feel that great, so they put it in the drawer. But you let it sit and then with some time thought, “oh no, there's something here,” and brought it back. I'm glad you did. How's Casey doing?
Rona:
Casey is great. He is a senior dog now.
Rhonda :
Oh, how old is he?
Rona:
He'll be 10 in November.
Rhonda :
Oh, wow. Okay.
Rona:
And he has some of the problems that older dogs get. He is very spry. He loves his life. But the dog I describe in the book, who is back -flipping over squirrels, doesn't exist anymore. He's become almost sedate.
Rhonda :
Oh gosh. Okay <laugh>. Such a pleasure to talk to you, Rona. And I really enjoyed reading the book. And I appreciate you talking to us about the process of getting there. From the outside, I think a lot of emerging writers maybe look at writers with books in the world and think, “man, it looks so easy. You must just sit down and it flows out. And you just run that sucker through a spell check and you're good to go.” But we know it doesn't work that way. So thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it.
Rona:
Thank you.
Outro:
Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that “yes, this is a great show. Definitely recommend it to other writers.” And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it, and I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.
