What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? It feels like I started writing this memoir in April 4, 1981 when my cousin Karen was killed and I saw my father cry for the first time. I felt like I was outside my body, watching the tragedy unfold. I actually started writing in January of 2014 when I took an introduction to memoir class at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. I had what I considered a polished, workshopped, shoppable draft 5 years later.
Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. I wrote most of my memoir at a tall desk in the office above my garage at my home in Los Angeles. It’s a large partner desk made of bookshelves (Pottery Barn). I sit in an adjustable tall stool with a green leather saddle seat (Design Within Reach). My office has white walls and all white furniture with green accents here and there. – green pillows, green rugs – that complement the skyscraper tall Ficus trees and podocarpus hedges I can see outside the large windows. I feel like I’m in a tree house when I’m up there writing. It lends a sense of play to the whole endeavor. I also enjoy being surrounded by the green and the sun dapping through the leaves onto the floor and walls where I write because it feels like a clean canvas, a blank slate to project my thought on stories onto. Although the walls are not empty.
I have a poster of an Alexander Calder mobile from one of his first exhibits at the LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum. I also have an original painting by Mary Blair. She was an artist at Disney, one of the few women and I believe my painting might have been done from Song of the South. Then I have little tchotchkes from all of my travels – a bust of Charles Dickens from his house in London, a blue and white tulip vase from Amsterdam, a snow globe I had made as a crew gift for a show I worked on called SELF MADE, one of the lunchboxes I had made for the crew of another TV show I wrote for called BOSCH. My office space that looks a mess at times, with piles of research, books waiting to be read, as well as dogeared and highlighted books everywhere. But everything has a purpose and special meaning to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Blair
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir – did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop, specific time of day? My writing habits for this my first book were influenced by my memoir writing instruct at UCLA Erika Schickel (she has a fabulous memoir out now took THE BIG HURT).
Erika’s suggestion was to write daily pages by hand in a spiral notebook so as not be too precious about it, as a way to warm up to the daily work ahead.
I would take a theme or issue, subject or scene and free write for 15 minutes. With the only goal to be getting unfiltered thoughts down on the page to be mined later. Next, I would look at what I had written the day before, confirm my satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the work, make notes about how to improve later, then press on to the next section. Forward movement was important. I wanted to keep going and get a rough first draft down on the page. “Don’t get it right, get it written” as the saying goes. Getting it right would come later. I wrote by hand and on the computer. Sometimes if I was having a particularly hard time getting the words to come through my fingers, I’d talk out loud and record my thoughts.
I will get up at 4 am to write. As I say in my memoir it felt like I was stealing time. My goal was to do 15 minutes to half an hour, something manageable that I could accomplish. But usually, I would keep going for a couple of hours. I found that I liked to do different tasks in different parts of my house. New chapter writing in the back office, revising at the dining room table so I could spread out all the pages of a chapter next to each other; and lighter revising on my desktop computer to take advantage of the large screen.
I never listen to music while writing. In fact, I like to block out most stray sounds. I will play a white noise machine to do so and wear headphones, sometimes even earplugs underneath the headphones. It makes me feel like I am inside of my own head. I tried to mostly drink water, but sometimes I’d make tea or walk to get a coffee at Starbucks around the corner or drive to a. high-end place further away to get the really good stuff. It’ s not that I needed the caffeine so much as I needed the ritual or a way to procrastinate as I warmed up to the writing ahead of me.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers as reference. The most difficult and emotional section was the part about beating up my dad.
EXCERPT
From Page 154
I went back to Queens for the Thanksgiving holiday. My mother still lived in the house where I was born and raised. I loved being home. The warm familiar feeling of my old room. The place where I was forged, that knew me best, that held my memories, but no longer, thankfully, held me.
I unpacked the clothes in my suitcase into the same dresser drawers I’d had since elementary school. I slept in the bottom half of my old bunk bed on a decades old mattress that shouldn’t have been comfortable but still was. The top bunk had been moved across the hall into my sister’s room where ten years ago my father had died while on home hospice with lung cancer that had spread to his blood, bones, and brain. After that my mother and I started a new tradition of lying awake under the covers in our own beds and talking into the wee hours of the night across the darkened hallway.
That Thanksgiving eve, in the late-night stillness, we talked about Karen’s murder. I asked her if my father had attended any of the parole hearings. Even though he’d never said anything about it to her, my mother remembered that I had told her he’d mentioned it to me. I told her about the pre-trial transcript and all the surprising and disturbing things I had learned about the case. She murmured a wounded sigh when I told her that the suspect had reloaded. That Santiago Ramirez had at times laughed during the proceedings. That the defense brought a motion to have Uncle Warren removed and banned from the courtroom. I asked if my father had attended any of the trial. My mother didn’t remember.
But she did remember that the mood in our house was tense. She reminded me that Karen’s funeral took place on my father’s 51st birthday. I could almost hear him saying, “Ain’t that something. Hell of a way to spend a birthday.” He would have been angry that his day was hijacked by a tragedy and he wasn’t in control or allowed to celebrate the way he wanted. My mother said I was full of piss and vinegar. Snapping at her – which was nothing new. But surprisingly, talking back to my father. As she recounted, I felt a twinge remembering the anger and resentment I felt. She said she had to force me to sign a birthday card and give him the gift she had wrapped and put my name on for him. I had said he didn’t deserve anything. My mother said she understood that I was grieving and struggling to process Karen’s murder, but she didn’t want my father’s feelings to be hurt. She remembered something else. She referred to it as “the incident” with my father. All at once I knew what she was going to say.
A memory I had blocked came flooding back. Of that morning’s light streaming through the blinds and laid out like ribbons on the living room floor. My father’s Bay Leaf cologne over coffee grinds and cigarette smoke. The ticking of the miniature grandfather clock on the mantle interrupted by the sickening dulled thud of bone under skin meeting flesh over bone. A punch, a fall, a struggle. Limbs and bodies scuffled. Images took shape alongside my mother’s words.
Can you describe the emotional process of writing about this ONE MEMORY? The step-by-step process was not a linear one. This was a memory I had blocked for most of my life. Thinking about it or revisiting it for the book was not something I wanted to do. I kept pushing this chapter to write later and later and ended up writing it last. I don’t know how to do it, how to process that memory. And I had a hard time letting myself remember it. As I mention in the book, I discussed hypnotherapy with a professional. He suggested I try to think about it on my own to unlock the memory. Many of the daily pages I did were about this memory and while it was so hard to bring back. I would type up those handwritten pages on the computer and dissected them in order to drill down to the truth. Extract what was real. One of the things I discovered in describing the events was that I didn’t fully remember what had happened. It would never be completely clear. It came to me in images. And that was alright. It was like an incomplete puzzle.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? So many deletions, but I can’t share any of them. I don’t have them. I never save what I delete. My process is to go through and whittled it down. Once it’s cut, I don’t see the need to save it. I feel like I’d rather re-have the experience by writing it again, then re-type or cut and paste something I had already written.
Raised in Hollis, Queens and educated at Harvard, Elle Johnson moved out to LA and got her first writing gig on the critically acclaimed drama HOMMICIDE, based on David Simon’s book. Her credits include cop shows LAW & ORDER, CSI:MIAMI, THE GLADES, and SAVING GRACE as well as character-driven series ANYDAY NOW, THE FOSTERS, and GHOST WHSIPERER. She was Executive Producer and co-showrunner on Netflix limited series SELF MADE: INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF MADAM CJ WALKER starring Octavia Spencer, was nominated for an Emmy in the lead role. The show also won the 20201 N.A.A.C.P. Image Award for best limited series. Most recently Elle was Executive Producer on Amazon Prime series BOSCHO. Her other adventures run the gamut from riding a bicycle across country for charity to working in development as a presidential intern at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. This is her first book.