I’m always excited when I read amazing, powerful books – and then have the honor of interviewing the authors who created them.
Glenda Burgess is the author of The Geography of Love, which was named one of The Ten Best Books of 2008 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a finalist for the 2008 Books for a Better Life Award.
Burgess boasts an amazing career, having been selected as a Presidential Management Fellow, a presitigious government executive program initiated under President Jimmy Carter.
She then completed almost ten years of service for the U.S. State Department and left to study creative writing. Like many other authors featured here, Burgess took the leap to follow her passion.
Burgess’ most recent book, The Geography of Love, is an amazing memoir that chronicles a real-life love story – not the love stories we grow up with, that promise the journey is easy and clear. While reading the memoir, and even after, I used it as a tool to reflect of the various love relationships that have been a part of the fabric of my own life.
In my opinion, memoirs that connect with readers in such a way ensures a deep bond between reader and author are the true measure of a book’s success – and The Geography of Love clearly succeeds.
I recently had the opportunity to connect with Burgess about The Geography of Love, her experiences as a writer and her suggestions for other writers and aspiring authors.
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Laura: When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? Have you always known this was what you wanted to do?
Glenda: I connected to the world of books as a young reader maxing out my treasured library card. The stacks of adventure stories I brought home from the library every Saturday were a way for me to expand my world by escaping into the magic of storytelling.
But there was also something compelling about the physical books themselves. The worn covers, the sense other hands had turned the pages, the idea that stories have this timeless and independent life waiting to be released by a reader. In fourth grade I entered a poem in a local newspaper contest. The paper printed it and paid me a dollar – I was hooked – I was a writer!
It certainly was a long apprenticeship – creative writing workshops, writing conference seminars, a small forest of bad drafts. (I have to pause here and thank HP for inventing the 5p Laser Printer in the early eighties. It just DID NOT die.)
The best advice is still that old saw – do anything else if you can. But it does seem true that the successful writer is the one that doesn’t quit. If you write, and keep writing, your craft inevitably improves, as well as your understanding of storytelling. What counts is the heart of the writer – and the joy found in the work itself.
Laura: Your powerful memoir, The Geography of Love, has won a number of awards, including the Robert Hughes award for literary fiction. Did you ever imagine you’d have such widespread success?
Glenda: “There are certain moments, sometimes just words, that part time. Who we were then from Who we are now.”
These are the words I use to describe the shift in my life that led to the writing of The Geography of Love. Falling in love – and the loss of love – forced me to come to terms with myself and for want of a better word, fate.
Writing memoir is a way of putting into words a personal emotional landscape, and in my effort to be honest, open, vulnerable, I think I mirrored something of what we all feel to be true of relationships. We hope for love, risk for it. We deal with life in the raw, hoping and believing in the possibility of magic. That this book is so well loved simply stuns me.
I have a tremendous appreciation for my readers, who continue to recommend the book to their friends and family, and send me letters I treasure. Readers teach me so much about how we live our stories. I should add here that the soft cover release is scheduled for August of 2009.
Laura: In my opinion, memoirs are an interesting genre, in that they require writers to delve deep into themselves to tell their own story, not someone else’s or another character’s. What would you say was the most challenging part of writing this memoir? The most rewarding?
Glenda: Memoir is a form of literature, like poetry, that invites the reader deeper into the experience of reflection. It is different to write memoir than a novel, because while memoir – meaning “my story” from the French – is experience translated through personal interpretation, it is nonetheless a narrative based in historical time, place and event. A world that is real. This is one of memoir’s appealing aspects.
The most difficult aspect of writing memoir is managing perspective – both as an observer of one’s own intimate experience, and in chronicling the larger canvas of the narrative. The subjective and the objective point of view frame and shadow each other constantly in memoir, and the author must know which is which at all times.
Memory offers the relative truth of an experience, whereas the facts of an event are the foundation, the anchor – even when mis-remembered. The difference in what happened and how it is remembered exposes another nuance of understanding. It is the search for meaningful truth that makes memoir both special and daunting.
I thought a lot about the polar roles of serendipity and chaos in life – the kind of chaos that is accidental and devastating. Mystery and circumstance shape our lives, yet there is a deep balance within us that continuously brings our choices into equal measure. I feel differently about the landscape of love than when I began my story.
Laura: What guidance can you offer new writers looking to start their writing practice – and most importantly, keep their practice going?
Glenda: Writers find their practice in how they live life itself. There is a famous Jay McInerney anecdote about jotting down the opening lines of “Bright Lights Big City” while sitting on his porch steps in a wrecked dawn, channeling the famous “you” of his story to answer his own “What am I doing here?” Sometimes the writing practice is the writing finding you.
Carry a notebook and pen. Write when story makes your fingers itch and whenever opportunity presents. I know writers who begin the day with essays to encourage, or “set up” a desired attitude or goal for the day, and others who free associate on the page, or explore writing exercises to step out of routine and invite in creative genesis.
Journal writing is where I find reflection and synthesis, from which other writing emerges. Never one to sit at the desk a proscribed time period to produce a proscribed amount of words, I’ve learned to wait on inspiration. Trust those fallow periods. In the course of writing three novels, I’ve discovered non-writing stretches to be periods of great gestation as the deeper mind turns the story over.
I do believe in deadlines. The mind is a lazy thing; as much as it loves the all-cons
uming bliss of creation, it doesn’t want to do the work. Deadlines give a good kick toward the chair. If you don’t have a deadline, make one. There are writers I know who use scheduled stays at writing retreats for this purpose – precious time not to be squandered.
The writing practice that serves your life serves your writing best.
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The Geography of Love will be released in softcover on August 4. You can find out more about Glenda Burgess, her works and The Geography of Love on her site. I have also included the Amazon.com link here.
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