Landall Proctor On the Vulnerability of Writing Memoir

In the summer of 2006, I set out to ride my bicycle solo and self-supported around the perimeter of the United States. Before leaving, a friend who had been an integral part of helping me plan the trip handed me a pocket-size journal, “For your memoir,” He said with a hug. While I had never considered writing a book, I journaled every night of my ride, recapping interesting and often odd interactions with strangers.

After the trip, I attempted to piece together my journey at least a dozen times. One of the problems I faced in completing the work that became Headwinds was deciding what kind of book it should be. As I was preparing for the trip, I searched desperately for any book about long-distance bike travel, but they simply did not exist. Now, on the other side of my own trip, I thought there was an opportunity to fill that space. I set the project aside and every few years I’d flip through my journal, open a document, and take another half-hearted stab until I let either self-doubt or indecision get in the way.

In the 14 years between completing the trip and writing Headwinds I’d find myself in social settings where someone new would learn about my summer in the saddle. They’d inevitably ask for my favorite story and, tired of always retelling about my accidental night at a nudist colony, I’d start to mix it up. More and more vignettes would make their way into the rotation. Like the time a cop pulled me over riding on the shrinking shoulder of the 101 trying to find the Golden Gate Bridge. Or about how I basically fueled my body on gas station fruit pies and McDonalds for three months. I often wondered if I could just tell the stories from my trip in a voice that made my friends and family feel like I was reading to them?

In the fall of 2019, I found myself at a sort of perfect storm for picking the project back up. I was feeling burned-out building software and was moving to Berkeley, CA from Detroit, MI with enough savings to support myself for a few months. I decided now was the time to finally put pen to paper and stick with the process through to the end. Instead of overthinking what kind of book I should write, I planned to simply take the project on day by day. I hoped that if I got the stories out of my head and onto paper, the type of book it should be would reveal itself.

For the next seven months I sat down daily, journal in hand and wrote. With a surprising frequency, details of the trip that I had long forgotten but had written about in my journal came vividly back into view. As the page length increased, I grew more confident that I was capturing the details of the trip as they happened, not just how I wanted to remember them.

As I’d hoped, eventually it became clear that I was writing a memoir, but that presented a terrifying prospect. Memoirs, as I thought of them, are often memorialized accounts of a life or event in which the reader should draw meaningful lessons. Did my bike trip qualify? I was fairly sure it didn’t, but since I was both making real progress and enjoying the process, I continued writing.

At some point, a few themes started to bubble to the surface. Some were obvious; the kindness of strangers, physical challenges related to riding a bike around the country, and equipment failures. These themes were objectively easy to recount. Two others weren’t quite so straightforward. I stayed with dozens of host families on the road, many of whom didn’t share my world view, particularly around matters of race and religion. I knew I needed to include these sometimes-painful encounters in an honest way, trying to encapsulate what was said, but being cautious to avoid a preachy tone. In these scenarios, I tried to leave space for the reader to evaluate the situation.

Another obvious theme that was difficult to explain but led to the spiral of emotions towards the end of the trip, was my deep loneliness. As somewhat of an introvert, I didn’t know what to make of my longing for social interactions with familiar faces and the feeling of a cartoonish storm cloud hovering overhead for hundreds of miles as I pedaled along. Having never faced such depression, it took a long time to diagnose the problem. Writing about that emotional response was my greatest challenge through the project. I had to learn to be vulnerable as I recalled sitting on a curb on the outskirts of Phoenix, watching a puddle of my own tears evaporate in the desert heat.

Headwinds doesn’t have a tidy ending that you might expect from a book about a bike trip. Spoiler alert. I called it quits before making the full lap around the country. For many years, a sense of shame for not completing the loop prevented me from fully sharing my experience. I was afraid people would view the trip, and me, as a failure. Some people still might, and that’s ok. In the end, I’m proud of the final version. What I came to realize through the writing process is that not all adventures wrap up in the way that you might have intended, but it doesn’t mean there weren’t lessons and stories worth retelling.

In that aspect, Headwinds turned out to be a memoir, but not one that aims to impart wisdom on its readers. Likewise, I never intended the book to be the culmination of a life well-lived. I set out to share my stories from that summer, finding the changing landscape of the country and myself as a then 24-year-old man pedaling a bicycle. If someone takes something away from my experiences that they can apply to their own life or spurs a conversation with friends, that’s great. But if all they do is laugh at my junk food diet and feel a tug on their heart strings at my descriptions of teary-eyed calls home, I’ll have done my job.

Landall Proctor is not a New York Times Bestseller, but if enough of you buy this book, he’ll happily update that sentence. So really, that’s on you. And your friends. And their friends. When he’s not writing about his bike trip he likes to race marathons, bird hunt with his dog George and say things that result in eye rolls from his son, Hudson. He lives in Berkeley, CA and thinks it's nice. You can find Headwinds and read more stories that didn't make the final edit here.

Flor Salcedo and Joanna Truman on Community Born from Creativity

This experience of a community coming together is best told by the voices that are part of it, thirteen voices blended together into one harmony. One book of short stories that came to be through this opportunity to unite and be something bigger together. 

Shadowing the tone of the girls in RISK by Rachel Hylton, we are the authors of the FORESHADOW YA Anthology: Joanna, Flor, Rachel, Mayra, Desiree, Linda, Gina, Maya, Sophie, Adriana, Tanvi, Nora, Tanya. One amazing opportunity to experience and celebrate the magic of reading and writing YA.

Foreshadow anthology was born out of the love of storytelling. It’s just that simple. We have always known a project like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and not just for the writers—the readers, too.

The most amazing thing about Foreshadow is that it’s not simply the experience of reading the stories. It’s a peek into what makes the stories—and by nature, their authors—tick. Snippets of the author’s inspiration, what propels them, word over word, into the next crescendo and the soft fall into a valley. The rise to the ending, a bright, sometimes violent crash, and the yawn afterwards, sinking into what you’ve just experienced. 

And then, even more. Discussion on story building, craft, and writing prompts. All in one nice little packaging of a book.

The editors of this anthology, Emily X.R. Pan and Nova Ren Suma, had a vision to lift emerging writers, to showcase underrepresented voices. The result of this journey is a creation that unguards a writer’s heart and builds a community. When we read the stories that aren’t ours, we find something new to love about writing every time. And that feeling, that love? We need to hold onto it, now more than ever.

Because writing is hard. Living is hard. But together, they make something amazing.

Both stories and life are made of moments; short stories, even more so. A single moment captured forever. Like in Joanna Truman’s story, anything can spark a story, the GLOW of a memory, long drives on the highway in the middle of the night. In Flor Salcedo’s thrilling ride, something as innocent as the sweet scent of PAN DULCE can carry you across time to a distinct place over borders where danger and excitement lurk at every corner—but you have to see it for yourself. These moments tend to do something to you, and Desiree Evans captures this something perfectly, growing a feeling deep in your BELLY that’s like a river’s powerful innards.

Mayra Cuevas shows us what it is like to have a deep longing for a sunny home you left—a Puerto Rico that has just been pummeled by a hurricane—but you keep it in your heart. Just so, there was a pull inside the Foreshadow authors that wanted the world to be there with us, our experiences, where we come from, our gravitas, quirkiness, and poise—what makes us the writers we are. But it’s just not possible to pocket readers and take them with us (sadly). Just like in Cueva’s story, we were RESILIENT and dug deep to put a piece of ourselves in our stories and took ourselves to the reader. 

With determination and a dash of vulnerability we leapt. Knowing our friends and family and strangers will read our work, that they might recognize flashes of faces or places or events. They might wonder, is that what she thinks of me? Is that what they remember from that night? Are those what their demons look like? 

Tanvi Berwah’s look into inner demons illustrates how some are like secrets, ones that pull you in and lock you up in a pochette without an ESCAPE. In Nora Elghazzawi’s piece, inner demons look like a stopped clock that the world has not waited for them to catch up, and SOLACE does not come easily. Or like Gina Chen puts it, what haunts us within sometimes show up like FOOLS simply in their own skin, feathered and smiling, and who’s to know if you can trust them or not?

When you’re writing, you are spilling your soul, swirling around the effervescent feelings inside and trying to siphon them into something that makes sense. It can be lonesome. Isolating. 

But like the protagonists in all these stories—when there’s no escape, we change and create one. When we can’t find solace, we grow it. When we’re faced with a demon, we make it our own.

We are the ones who have been told that our stories are unrelatable. Or perhaps the excuse that no one wants to read about girls who make other girls’ hearts rumble, and who needs to delve into realistic violence that rips through communities and steals a chunk of teens’ innocence. Maya Prasad’s story contemplates on what makes us human and imagines artificial intelligence that yearns to take a PRINCESS for itself in digital immortality. But not before being told her art is not needed. These types of words can cinch around your neck like a leash allowing self-doubt to creep in.

But then.

But then, you find someone like you. You’re surrounded by other writers and their stories, arms around one another forming an impenetrable wall. Others read your words and marvel and support you. They hold your hand as you make your way through the darkest part of the woods. It is as if you’ve been trapped inside the wrong skin and now that you’ve found the right one, you are ready to take FLIGHT, as Tanya Aydelott demonstrates. 

You feel— 

Invincible.

Like in Adriana Marachlian’s story, when you see your reflection in the dark tunnels and look for the light, you aren’t facing the MONSTERS alone anymore. When you slip underwater and reach out for someone, you don’t have to be afraid of drowning. You do the same as in Linda Cheng’s piece, push out of the shell that binds you. You are no longer SWEETMEATS to those who want to eat you alive and watch you fail. 

And that changes everything.

We know that the world does want our stories. Our voices are important.

Like in Sophie Meridien’s BREAK, we are here to break the streak of letting the skeptics dictate the worth of our voices. We are made because we write our stories anyway.

Rachel put it well, we are all lobsters. We simply are. Beautifully strange, fierce, horrific, amazing creators of our worlds who cherish and support each other. And we won’t unlobster.

And to you, reading this, our fellow storytellers—because you don’t need to be a writer to tell your story—let this be a letter to you from your community, as we gather around you and peer over your shoulder at all you have to give. No matter what the world tries to say to you, your story is needed, in all its pain and glory, wonder and weirdness. You? You are needed.

So come on in, and tell us a story.

Flor Salcedo was born and raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. She currently resides in Austin, Texas with her husband and five cats. She has always been fascinated with anything tech and as a result, gravitated toward software which she’s been programming for over a decade.

When she isn’t doing writerly or programmer things, she is curling up with her cats and catching up on sleep, dreaming of the day she can become a full-time writer. Find Flor on Twitter: @FlorSPower

Joanna Truman is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer based in Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the FSU College of Motion Picture Arts and is the creative director at Soapbox Films, where she was a writer on season one of Muppets Now on Disney Plus. She has published speculative fiction in Apex Magazine and Luna Station Quarterly and has been featured in the nationally broadcast NPR program To the Best of Our Knowledge. She also enjoys streaming video games and various shenanigans on Twitch. Find Joanna online at joannatruman.com, on Twitch @nimblefizz, and on Twitter and Instagram: @joannatruman.

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Truth and Dare: A Childhood Burn Survivor Tells Her Truths

by Dr. Lise Deguire, clinical psychologist and author of Flashback Girl: Lessons on Resilience from a Burn Survivor.

Fifty-four years ago, I was burned in a devastating fire. Just three years ago, I discovered the true story of that fire. That same year, I also lost my mother, the last member of my first family. After she died, after we held her service and cleaned out her apartment, I began to write my book. I had never written a book before. I had no idea what I was doing.

Words poured out of me like water gushing from a garden hose. I woke up and wrote. I wrote every morning before work. I wrote every weekend. I gave up exercising and reading so I would have more time to write. I wrote like a liberated woman, which is what I was. I finally felt liberated to tell my story.

For 50 years, I withheld my life stories. I held back those stories because I knew my parents would be mad at me if I told them. My stories are not the same as their stories. In their stories, they were gifted and brilliant, sexy and fun. And my parents were indeed all those things. But they didn’t keep us safe, me and my brother. They meant to (and it is not always easy to be an effective parent). It is even harder to be an effective parent if you are absorbed with your own needs, to the point that you can’t prioritize your children. . . to the point that you can’t see that your children are suffering. . . to the point that your children are in grave danger and you. . . look away.

What are these stories? There is casual carelessness. There is neglect and abandonment. Also, fun and adventure. Music and travel. Stunning genius. (Them! Not me). Tragic suicides, searing pain, and more loss. Emotional healing and rebirth. Plus, you know, that fire. It all began with that fire.

Tension burns a different kind of fire inside me now. Who am I to share these secrets? Is it wrong? Will I regret this? Am I a bad girl, daring to speak ill of my parents, whom I also love? And yet. . .

I need to speak the truth about what I have gone through. I need to tell the truth about my brother and how I lost him. I need to speak the truth for my own wholeness and for the blessed memory of my brother, Marc. I survived my childhood; he did not.

Far beyond my own need to be true, I believe the truth helps people. Many people have suffered through stories like mine, and much worse. Those of us who suffer and get well can build a recovery roadmap for those who suffer now. Our roadmaps can point others toward the direction of healing. I hope my roadmap, my book, Flashback Girl, can help people trying to heal from tragedies and build themselves a better life.

Dr. Lise Deguire is a clinical psychologist in private practice for over 20 years and the author of Flashback Girl: Lessons on Resilience from a Burn Survivor. Her memoir is earning rave reviews and is available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Newtown Book Shop and The Commonplace Reader. The lone surviving child of unsettled and iconoclastic parents, she grew up all over New Jersey and Long Island. Following a horrific fire where she suffered burns on two-thirds of her body, she spent much of her childhood alone in a Boston hospital, undergoing countless surgical procedures. Dr. Deguire graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Tufts University and earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from Hahnemann/Widener University. She maintains a solo practice in Pennington, New Jersey. Dr. Deguire has appeared on television and radio, and has been published in the Trenton Times, GrownandFlown.com, and Medium.com. She also writes about psychological resilience issues in her blog and is a national keynote speaker. She is married, has two grown daughters, and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.