Speaker 1: This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about
Speaker 1: everything here on this show. And today we have a
Speaker 1: story from Leslie leyland Fields. She's an author, a speaker,
Speaker 1: and a teacher, and she lives in Kodiak, Alaska. This
Speaker 1: is a story of how she came to write her
Speaker 1: first memoir, something she thought she'd never do. Here's Leslie.
Speaker 2: This is the story of a book. Really, it's the
Speaker 2: story of writing a book I never wanted to write.
Speaker 2: It's the story of surviving the writing of a book
Speaker 2: I never wanted to write, but it changed my life
Speaker 2: in every way. Let me back up. I've always believed
Speaker 2: in the power of story. I was a voracious reader
Speaker 2: from a young age, and as soon as I could write,
Speaker 2: I began creating poems and stories. I grew up in
Speaker 2: a time in culture when quiet children were the best children,
Speaker 2: and thinking you were special in any way was the
Speaker 2: pinnacle of pride, and pride was the worst sin of
Speaker 2: them all. So when I grew up and became a writer,
Speaker 2: my main interest was other people's stories. Who would care
Speaker 2: about me or my life? Yes, my life was not
Speaker 2: a typical American life. I lived in Alaska, mostly in
Speaker 2: the summers. I commercial fished with my new husband and
Speaker 2: his family on a tiny island in the wilderness with
Speaker 2: no roads or cars. It was an island with eight
Speaker 2: people on it, just us. We lived through days and
Speaker 2: nights of such drama and stories. Even then, other people's
Speaker 2: stories were much better than mine, so I wrote about
Speaker 2: other people. By age forty, I had published two collections
Speaker 2: of stories about fishermen and women, and then I began
Speaker 2: a third book. This one was different. It was about
Speaker 2: my own experience as living in the wilderness with my husband,
Speaker 2: digging a well by hand, hauling water and buckets, building
Speaker 2: our own house with very few tools, doing the laundry
Speaker 2: outside in the winter in an old ringer washing machine,
Speaker 2: prying frozen laundry off the line, and stacking the towels
Speaker 2: stiff in my arms into the house like a stack
Speaker 2: of wood. Stories like that I sent to my agent.
Speaker 2: Yes I had an agent somehow. Earlier that year I
Speaker 2: had landed a hot New York literary agent. But she
Speaker 2: didn't like it. Here's how our first phone call went, Leslie,
Speaker 2: I really like these essays, but there's one problem. You're
Speaker 2: not in them, I know, I replied, that's the point.
Speaker 2: This is about topics. Much bigger than me, about water,
Speaker 2: the ethical dilemmas of killing animals, about our wasteful culture,
Speaker 2: so many important things. It's about universals, yes, but we
Speaker 2: don't care about universals unless we care about you. You're
Speaker 2: completely absent, and nobody wants essay collections. Now this has
Speaker 2: to be your story. You're gonna have to turn this
Speaker 2: into a memoir. A memoir, I gulped. Memoir was a
Speaker 2: dirty word to me. I equated it with first person
Speaker 2: tell all stories by strippers and smoky bars, and with
Speaker 2: supermarket tabloids of disgraced politicians and ravaged movie stars. Memoir
Speaker 2: felt indulgent and just a little scandalous. I couldn't do it,
Speaker 2: and besides, no one would be interested in my life.
Speaker 2: Uh no, Kate, I can't do that. And I hung up.
Speaker 2: But the next week, while teaching a creative writing class,
Speaker 2: I heard myself say to my students, if you want
Speaker 2: to grow as a person, as a writer, you have
Speaker 2: to take on new challenges. And then I stopped for
Speaker 2: a moment to listen to myself. I decided to try it.
Speaker 2: Took a month to get another phone appointment with Kate.
Speaker 2: The next call went like this, remember, Kate, you asked
Speaker 2: me to turn those essays into a memoir and to
Speaker 2: make it about my life. Yes, of course, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: do it good. I knew you would. Then I got brave.
Speaker 2: So how do you write a memoir? She laughed, or
Speaker 2: something equally unhelpful. You'll figure it out. It wasn't easy
Speaker 2: to invite that eye into my house. I so wanted
Speaker 2: to stay invisible. But I started with scenes, the cornerstone
Speaker 2: of good memoir, to take the readers straight into the action.
Speaker 2: Scenes that show a life rather than tell about a life.
Speaker 2: I wrote about the first day when I officially became
Speaker 2: a fisherwoman. I remember the process of getting dressed with
Speaker 2: layer upon layer of sweatshirts, hip boots, rain pants, finally
Speaker 2: layered so thick and heavy I could hardly walk. I
Speaker 2: wrote about my first snack and bathroom break on the
Speaker 2: water in the boat. Talk about basic. We worked in
Speaker 2: eighteen foot open boats with no cabin and of course
Speaker 2: no toilet. This day I was out with my new husband,
Speaker 2: Duncan and my father in law de Witt. That scene
Speaker 2: went like this, it's almost noon. Now we've been fishing
Speaker 2: for four hours. I sit wearily on the wooden seat,
Speaker 2: looking at the fish on the floor of the skiff.
Speaker 2: There must be five hundred of them, all fat and shiny.
Speaker 2: The waves slap and slosh our skiff side to side.
Speaker 2: I'm hungry and I need a bathroom break. But how
Speaker 2: does this happen in an eighteen foot boat. There's no
Speaker 2: cabin on our little wooden pea pod. It's just a
Speaker 2: glorified row boat afloat on a great Alaska sea. DeWitt
Speaker 2: sits heavily in the bow, his black green raincoat mirroring
Speaker 2: the dark water below. Well, I guess I gotta shake
Speaker 2: the dew off my lily de wit in tones in
Speaker 2: a gravelly voice. I can hear his Oklahoma accent. Though
Speaker 2: we left forty years before during the dust Bowl. He
Speaker 2: grew up poor, picking cotton and working the land. Now
Speaker 2: he works the seas, but he moves awkwardly in the
Speaker 2: boats and never seems at home on moving water. Except now.
Speaker 2: I smile at Duncan and DeWit and turn around when
Speaker 2: they are done. It's my turn. Let me off on
Speaker 2: that rock over there, Duncan. I point to a cove
Speaker 2: with a shelf of rock jutting out. In a moment
Speaker 2: we are there, the skiff rising and plunging in the waters,
Speaker 2: swirling around the rocks. I'm nervously perched in the bow,
Speaker 2: ready to spring overboard at just the right second. My
Speaker 2: hands twitch as they grip the rail. I'm motionless but
Speaker 2: breathing hard. Jump. Duncan yells as the nose of the
Speaker 2: skiff rises in the foaming surge. You're not close enough.
Speaker 2: I shoot behind me. I see sitting calmly beside Duncan,
Speaker 2: as if we've done this one hundred times, I can't
Speaker 2: get any closer. Jump, he shouts, as the boak gurgles
Speaker 2: and sinks now in the trough. I can't leap that
Speaker 2: distance in all this fishing gear, and if I miss.
Speaker 2: How did a simple bathroom break become a life and
Speaker 2: death endeavor? I wrote scenes from my life all summer long,
Speaker 2: But first we created a riding studio on our island.
Speaker 2: My husband and I cleaned out a tiny shed on
Speaker 2: a dock over the ocean. It was filled to the
Speaker 2: rafters with decades of junken old tools. We dragged in
Speaker 2: two sawhorses, dropped a four x eight sheet of plywood
Speaker 2: on top, and there it was my desk, my office,
Speaker 2: the shed wasn't insulated or heated, so even in the summer,
Speaker 2: with the temperature in the forties, I sat in a
Speaker 2: winter coat, hunched over my legal pad or old computer, writing,
Speaker 2: remembering as I wrote, the fishing boats rumbled as they passed,
Speaker 2: the crows and bald eagles screeched overhead. I wrote, and
Speaker 2: I wrote. Then I sent the chapters to Kate.
Speaker 1: And you're listening to Leslie leyland Fields and the story
Speaker 1: of writing a book that she said she never wanted
Speaker 1: to write. In fact, as she put it, it's the
Speaker 1: story of surviving writing a book that she never wanted
Speaker 1: to write. When we come back, more of the story
Speaker 1: of Leslie leyland Fields, a regular contributor here on this show,
Speaker 1: her story about writing her memoir here on Our American Story.
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories. And we've been
Speaker 1: listening to author, speaker, and teacher Leslie leyland Fields. She
Speaker 1: lives in Alaska and has been brilliantly telling the story
Speaker 1: of how she came to write her first memoir. Let's
Speaker 1: return to Leslie.
Speaker 2: I'm on the phone again now with Kate. Leslie good
Speaker 2: scenes here graphic, compelling, her voices clipped, hurried as usual.
Speaker 2: The book feels closer, but there's something crucial missing. What
Speaker 2: is it? I asked with Dred, wondering if she's going
Speaker 2: to tell me to scrap the whole thing and start over.
Speaker 2: Why did you stay? I understand why you went into
Speaker 2: the Alaska Wilderness all that, but what kept you after
Speaker 2: all that happened? And how were you changed at the end?
Speaker 2: Without that arc, there's no story. Yeah, okay, I say,
Speaker 2: heart sinking. I know Kate is talking about the inner story,
Speaker 2: haven't I taught this to my students. Every story has
Speaker 2: at least those two layers. The outer story what happens
Speaker 2: in the out there world, and the inner story, the
Speaker 2: deeper story, this psychic, emotional, spiritual story. I knew this
Speaker 2: before I began the memoir. This was what scared me
Speaker 2: most about life. Stories and memory are. But how could
Speaker 2: I say no to this? Now? I had signed the
Speaker 2: book contract, and I knew that if I was going
Speaker 2: to grow as a writer and as a human being,
Speaker 2: I needed to take this next step. There are hard
Speaker 2: questions I needed to ask. Who was that twenty year
Speaker 2: old girl just married, standing in a skiff, trying to
Speaker 2: keep her balance in the new waters of marriage? Living
Speaker 2: with her in laws on a remote island in Alaska?
Speaker 2: Was there something there we all might see about finding
Speaker 2: and making home in a strange land. I started writing
Speaker 2: inside each of the significant events of those first years.
Speaker 2: Whenever I had the chance, I scribbled, digging down layer
Speaker 2: by layer. I wrote myself back to those days in
Speaker 2: the skiff, the long hours, the storms, getting sick and
Speaker 2: still needing to work, to the icy silences between my
Speaker 2: husband and me. I wrote about the day I jammed
Speaker 2: clothes and food into a backpack and escaped the island
Speaker 2: the only way possible, by waiting until low tide and
Speaker 2: marching off down to an empty shack four miles down
Speaker 2: the beach, gun over my shoulder for bears. I wrote
Speaker 2: myself back to that near disastrous day when I almost
Speaker 2: didn't make it home. I insisted on taking the skiff
Speaker 2: out on an important errand it was going to be
Speaker 2: a four hour trip. I insisted on going alone. It
Speaker 2: was a long way to go on the ocean in
Speaker 2: the winter. A snowstorm came up. I got lost in
Speaker 2: the total wide out, and then the engine broke down.
Speaker 2: I wrote about it, describing how scared I was when
Speaker 2: it started snowing, when the engine died, when I knew
Speaker 2: I had drifted out onto the open ocean, when I
Speaker 2: thought I might die, But the inner story I didn't
Speaker 2: know it yet. I was learning again what I thought
Speaker 2: I already knew. Our stories about so much more than
Speaker 2: what happened. It's just as important to know why those
Speaker 2: things happened, to know what moves and motivates us, and
Speaker 2: how those moments, large and small, change us, and how
Speaker 2: they might change our readers too. I began to write
Speaker 2: more deeply into those two stories, and it slowly came clear,
Speaker 2: word by word what I was doing in both of
Speaker 2: those events. I was escaping a place that wasn't mine,
Speaker 2: an ocean, an island, a life that belonged to my
Speaker 2: new husband and his family, but it didn't belong to
Speaker 2: me yet. It wasn't mine except by marriage. By proxy.
Speaker 2: My life was borrowed, shoehorned into whatever cracks I could
Speaker 2: fit in, even where we lived those first three summers.
Speaker 2: We lived in a tiny loft atop a rickety ladder
Speaker 2: and an old building, a loft just big enough to
Speaker 2: hold a bed and a wood stove. We could only
Speaker 2: stand up in the middle. As I wrote, I realized
Speaker 2: so much about my life I hadn't seen before. I
Speaker 2: felt compassion for the young woman I was, and for
Speaker 2: my husband, for the two of us trying to make
Speaker 2: a marriage work on a wilderness island with endless nets,
Speaker 2: ocean and fish we couldn't control. I realized that both
Speaker 2: those escapes helped make that island in that place mine too.
Speaker 2: In some way, my fingers on the keyboard showed me
Speaker 2: yet more. There were so many rescues and second chances.
Speaker 2: I began to see that these chapters from my life
Speaker 2: were indeed about survival, but it was also a story
Speaker 2: of grace, not easy grace, hard grace, the kind you
Speaker 2: pray you'll survive. And there it was the title and
Speaker 2: the paradox that came to shape the final story, Surviving
Speaker 2: the Island of Grace. Six months later, I finished the book.
Speaker 2: My stomach quivered, my index finger hovered over attached file.
Speaker 2: No one would publish it, I was sure, but I
Speaker 2: had learned so much in writing it page by page.
Speaker 2: I punched send and it was done. What would Kate think?
Speaker 2: I soon found out. Kate sent it out into the
Speaker 2: world immediately after receiving it, and then it began a
Speaker 2: steady stream of rejections from the major New York publishers
Speaker 2: over the next two months. But then there was a
Speaker 2: yes from one of the New York Big ten publishers.
Speaker 2: It was a hearty yes. Suddenly Kate was great, and
Speaker 2: she said I was too. My first memoir and surely
Speaker 2: my last would soon be in bookstores around the country.
Speaker 2: But that's not the true happy ending to this story.
Speaker 2: When I began writing the memoir reluctantly, I did not
Speaker 2: even know what I was looking for. The writing showed me,
Speaker 2: in the midst of roaring seas, the claustrophobia of an
Speaker 2: island with no escape, doubts of my own ability as
Speaker 2: a writer. Words saved my life. Words carved out a
Speaker 2: space between land and sea where maybe I could hold fast.
Speaker 2: Writing surviving the Island of Grace brought me here to
Speaker 2: this moment. One morning, I sat on a distant beach
Speaker 2: on our island. I was alone except for the two
Speaker 2: ravens on a cliff above me, spatting. Was I sorry?
Speaker 2: I had chosen Duncan and this place and this very
Speaker 2: particular life that came with it. No, how could anything
Speaker 2: be other than it was? But when I chose all
Speaker 2: of this back in nineteen seventy seven, I did not
Speaker 2: know what I was choosing. I came here with Duncan
Speaker 2: at twenty, running from a difficult childhood. I was certain
Speaker 2: I would find wholeness and freedom in him and in
Speaker 2: this island world. I looked around. It was still as
Speaker 2: wild and clean and vast a place as when I
Speaker 2: first came, but I hadn't known what to measure.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 2: I know now that what I was looking for is
Speaker 2: not something that can be found, not in a place
Speaker 2: or in a person. Freedom and wholeness must be made,
Speaker 2: and it is made out of whatever is around you.
Speaker 2: It is made out of whatever is given to you.
Speaker 2: Like the barnacles on the rocks around me, I looked
Speaker 2: at them closely. They were anchored to a massive rock,
Speaker 2: but they were moving. In each of them, the beak,
Speaker 2: like a tiny telescope, was rounding the perimeter of its
Speaker 2: own shell. There, halfway between land and water, was a
Speaker 2: creature that literally grows its own cliff walls, His own
Speaker 2: form entraps him. It is his prison, his island he
Speaker 2: cannot escape. But then I saw it is also his
Speaker 2: mountain fortress, the very grace that sustains his life. When
Speaker 2: I finished writing Surviving the Island of Grace. I was hooked.
Speaker 2: Once I started writing the truest words from my life
Speaker 2: that I could find, such clarity, discovery, and consolations have
Speaker 2: come to me. I don't ever want to stop. When
Speaker 2: we steward the beautiful burdens and difficult passages we've been
Speaker 2: given in our lives, we have another chance to reclaim
Speaker 2: and heal those burdens. I've seen it thousands of times
Speaker 2: in my own life in others. This is my work
Speaker 2: now teaching others to do the same, and in all
Speaker 2: our stories, we who are stranded on islands and in
Speaker 2: strange places have found the words and the grace to
Speaker 2: write ourselves home.
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Leslie laland Fields. To find
Speaker 1: out more about her work and also her teaching, go
Speaker 1: to Leslie Lalanfields dot com. I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was looking for. The writing showed me words saved my life.
Speaker 1: Leslie leyland Field's story here on our American Stories