 here's where we are going to read it's about reading books or writing books and everything between today I've shortened my opening because I have a special guest that I'm very excited about and that is Laura Lentz author of story class and we are going to crack the code on writing your memoir I cannot wait aloha laura welcome to the show thank you so much for being here aloha Elaine it's such an honor to be here you know I love your writing and your talent so it's super exciting to share a screen with you and a show with you thank you so much but I'm going to spell on yours a little bit Laura is our special guest she's a respected author creative coach editor although she's not taking any editing right now and writing teacher she's been conducting themed writing workshops through her internationally accepted literati academy for over 10 years for writers authors and business owners her most popular workshop is by far story quest it's a 12-week guide that distills the hero's journey by bringing you transformative stories to life on the page but that's not all that Laura teaches I have to tell you I've taken some of her classes and I just couldn't wait to get you on this show I'm so happy to have you so Laura tell it we don't have much time we have a lot to talk about so tell us about story quest the hero the writer and the journey I'm just going to hold this up we can well I I would say that um thank you for holding it up I would say the book was a labor of love working with writers for me is definitely a labor of love um Christopher Vogler and Joseph Campbell made the hero's journey popular in Hollywood and they always discussed film and the hero's journey and so I went and dove into memoir to see how the hero's journey applied to memoir and um it does and I know I'm not allowed to curse on the show so I'm going to be super careful but um you know I'll just say if like if you're in your life and then you overcome that and then you get kicked down again I mean that's the hero's journey and our country is on a hero's journey right now I mean it's clear that we're broken and being broken is part of the hero's journey and so I took this 12 week class that I taught that was so popular and I turned it into a workbook so if you know it's filled with 62 writing prompts and inspiration from poets and excerpts out of literature including Sharon Olds, Dag's Leap, Lydia Yupnevich, The Chronology of Water um and so I show you examples of stages of a hero's journey in other memoirs that are best-selling and very intriguing memoirs and I purposely chose all different styles of memoir knowing that every writer has a different voice and a different way into their story so it's very comprehensive it's like it's a 12 week class in a workbook and it's a lot of work to do it people get it and they were like oh I thought it was just a couple writing prompts and I'm like no it's a deep dive it's a deep dive can you tell us how that does work because uh you know the workbook I've gone through some of it because I write fiction I haven't written a memoir yet because there's just not enough wine in my house to get me through one but that's that's the joke they always give anyway but um I've looked through it in search of how it can help my fiction writing and some of the exercises have worked out very well accordingly so can you explain I mean viewers how it works well there's 12 stages to the hero's journey and so um there there's always this world before the world that you're showing us in a memoir and that's the way things were before everything changed it's kind of essential because we can't understand change unless we know where you were right so if you've fallen in love for example opening up with that moment of falling in love is okay but if you leave out what your life was like before we may not understand the difference and then there's this call right we all have the call to grow and any character in fiction or your character in memoir has a call and it's a call to change I tell everyone whether you want to call that call from God or the universe you know when it knocks on your door if you don't answer it oh God help you because the universe will kick your door down and if you ignore it it might burn your house down and if you ignore it again something worse might happen so we're meant to live in our truest selves all of us the fiction characters which are all based on us anyway our character and answering the call is probably the hardest part to get through and then everything goes wrong once you answer the call right that's life it doesn't mean you get an instant reward it means you have growth and challenges add and that's why I say we're all in it now we're all in a hero's journey and America is in a hero's journey very true from a very broken country yes why should any of us use your workbook what makes your workbook user friendly to those of us who want to write a memoir well you know I have this technique that I just found out I took a master class with Jane Hirschfield and I just found out she uses the same technique um where I make lists I I do things where I have students make lists I drop them in before they actually write and I give them inspiration so it's my theory that we're writing on the backs of every writer that came before us you know we think we're writing alone or for alone in our room creating or even if we're in a writing group when we're writing we're writing by ourselves but we're actually writing on the backs of all the influence that has come to us from everything we've read and all the writers that we work beside and so you know this book takes you quickly into where you need to be and in 13 minutes you can finish an entire chapter it doesn't mean it's edited but it means you can have a first draft of each stage of your life through this workbook so if I were to ask you what do we stand to gain from this it's obviously a memoir or a memoir or a book or a or a blog or an essay book or you know a lot of people are creating content for even social media so it helps you create a full story I always say most of my essays are a whole hero's journey in 750 words now have you used this for businesses as well I you know I used to teach a class called story marketing but I I don't have the time to teach it anymore but it was wonderful and I might make a workbook out of it and it helps people you know Apple has their story every company has their story Facebook has his story and when we understand the story of a company and then we can align with that story you see the dress companies doing it now right they're like this is made here these are hand done here's the workers there's a lot of transparency around a lot of business now and we buy based on that transparency so your story of business is a hero's journey most business owners story of how they created their business so yes I used to teach story marketing now you have other things going on as well I have to know that you have a book of essays coming up November 1st yes it's called freeing the turkeys and it has nothing to do with me dating but um uh it's a book that is a compilation of essays I've written over the last five years but most of them the last two years um and there are essays about the body I've had cancer twice the body breaking the body healing some of them are funny our ancestors I even have a whole section about the dead talking to me which doesn't happen that often but it happens enough to get a section of stories about um what else body's breaking grief there's a lot of grief in it I had grief young I think my first big grief event I was five and um so uh I think those stories my stories my essays bring hope and I have been asked about a thousand times for a compilation and I'm finally answering that call okay have you written a memoir yourself on any of these you know I'm working on a memoir um that this title came from freeing the turkeys and it's a memoir of two years of my life um it was my boyfriend dying um he died when I was 23 and I met him when I was 19 and it's a sweet funny love story and um with filled with grief and snot and crying and with a beautiful happy ending that ends in Italy one of the things that I like about your writing is because I'm I'm intimate with your writing and your writing is you travel inside the body inside the heart inside the soul and I wonder if you could read us a short essay of something that you've written because I find your writing exceptional I you make me think you make me cry you make me want to write just like you and I don't know how you write just like you and it's amazing I just want to say that so I'm sure there are people would say the same I want to write just like Elaine and the great thing about writing is that we all have our own voices and they're all unique and beautiful but this is a piece that I wrote um about um love and hate so here we go I walk through Leonardo da Vinci airport like a ripe strawberries smelling like sex and wine and sweat running brawlers through the terminal and entering a small commuter plane filled with Italian businessmen and women annoyed their flight was delayed this was the time when they held the plane a few minutes longer for anyone I had just blossomed after a year and a half of being an orchid bud tight on the stem too tight to bloom from grief but I had thrown a coin over my left shoulder into trevy fountain and made a wish and the concrete gods and winged horses seemed to want my wish to come true love came easy in another continent it was a combination of the place the man the timing the language a year and a half before my boyfriend had died suddenly and I was sure I would never love again but a coin toss and a man in a small white fiat would take my heart out of the concrete that had been poured and break it open in front of the Spanish steps we all have love stories a time in our lives when love seems to turn everything magical but what happens in life when love is hard when someone is hard to love when they knock on your door too early or leave their kids with you for two extra hours or overreact to something you did or didn't do what if someone has a different viewpoint than you politically or doesn't believe a woman has the right to choose what happens to her body once she becomes pregnant maybe they eat a different diet than you worship a different god than you can you love them can you love republicans now can you love biden supporters doctors who forgot to fill out the paperwork for a test you need that might save your life years ago i read an essay from a holocaust historian john sacks who was invited to a holocaust deniers conference and he decided to say yes after years of declining during the reception he was surprised to find himself enjoying their company and he found them to be warm and inviting even intelligent later when he went to the podium to speak he looked out at the sea of faces and paused he had prepared an entire presentation with timelines photographs facts but looking at men and women so like himself he decided to talk about love instead he said when we fall in love we don't just love have love for that person we have not used up all our love love is a muscle when we use it it expands us and helps us love more until we're in a universe of love what he said next might surprise you hate is also a muscle hate was brewing when hitler came into power and what i want to say about hate is that it spreads one word of hate a simple negative sentence can quickly spread to become a mount st helens of hate exercising exercising the wrong muscle is how we got to the holocaust and that's what's happening now in america by now i thought it would be over but the hatred is palpable even on aroloha island where i find myself yelling at a tourist yesterday who pulled into honolate parking lot at 40 miles per hour this holocaust historian said we're all capable of this kind of hatred every one of us how did the holocaust deniers react to his speech with a standing ovation his words began to build a bridge for further discussion because love always feels better it spreads like butter like a seed in the trade winds one thing both sides could agree upon there was a lot of hatred yelling in the parking lot to a tourist from the mainland who hadn't acclimated to kawai customs wasn't a mindful or loving response from me in this time in history it is so important to choose carefully which muscle you want to strengthen when responding to another person because as author nicolas spark says just when you think it can't get any worse it can and just when you think it can't get any better it can that's my essay oh see i don't write that that's that's so beautiful that is so beautiful encompasses so much um is this is going to be part of the essays in your essay book yeah that's one of the essays in my essay book um yeah your publishing win november 1st i wanted out in time for christmas because my atheist boyfriend died on christmas morning and so i this is my gift you know to the world and um there was some humor in that i guess you didn't laugh but i didn't laugh this morning is somewhat funny it was a good way for him to go out yes oh well condolences on that but um you're right so someone was knocking on your door right and then it crashed through and all of this happened so you have to write you have to write okay tell us about your literati academy i think we have something on your website about that yes so i teach six-week themed classes right now we're on the body we just finished the body and we're starting another course on the body um and um so basically and then july 9th we're doing an online event so if you've never tried my classes doing one of my big online events is great because you get the feeling of the class you may write with 100 people but you read back in breakout rooms of eight so um womb stories i mean and you know i these aren't abortion stories they can be it can be any womb story you have that's um calling to you to write finally how timely this is i know i had it up a month ago but we all knew this was happening i mean if not only was it leaked but um we had to not be following who was going on to the supreme court you know oh goodness yeah i mean uh you had to be asleep not to know what what was going to happen but yeah i i womb stories matter were women and men i invite men to come write your womb stories to july 9th because men lose babies men make these decisions with women and men are fathers and um so even though they don't have a womb they're they're interacting with wombs yes and we and i invite the male opinion i had a grandmother recently tell me about her daughter's abortion and she said she grieved for months and i had never thought about a grandmother grieving yes yes and i would think that a father grieves too if he doesn't have a choice in the matter as well yes and all those stories matter all of them matter and they're hard to write i've had 10 people sign up and cancel sign up again and cancel again because it's one of those topics and i did write one and made it public on my facebook wall so that and i found it hard also i'm asking everyone to do something and then i wrote a story where i had an abortion then i had a baby then i had to have a dnc for a baby that lost its heart in the fifth month and so i kind of covered it all in one story but i found it hard also i thought oh my god i'm going to lose so many friends on facebook and people are going to be very upset but they weren't upset because people need the truth we're in a time in history where the truth is all that is going to heal yes i agree with that 100 percent and the more we talk about it the better it is for everyone who is harboring and in pain over it right because stories heal you say yourself stories heal they do and i had a student in my class she's very christian she's lovely she wrote about um the abortion she regretted her whole life and why and when it came to us in a story i mean there were gas from everybody in the room there wasn't a dry eye in the house those are important story to me a story gets a point across but a sign does not screaming does not get a point across a story creates a bridge i would think too that for some of these people in your classes these workshops which i've attended several of them and i've enjoyed very much uh these workshops alone could begin some memoirs for people yes i had a woman write her whole memoir well i've had two women write their entire books three i'm sorry three in my class one was debbie augenfaller and she's one of the stories i reckon one of the memoirs i recommend people buy to see the hero's journey it's called you are not alone and her husband died in her arms yeah debbie's great her husband died in her arms when she was 33 and i helped her edit that book and it's won numerous awards and i will say that you know um she wrote it all in my living room she came to the island for a year and wanted to take the workshops live and of course then became the arduous six to eight months of editing but uh the content was all written and so you can take my body class and write to any topic you know because we we start with the tongue and the throat the next class so it's voice how you lost your voice how you found your voice that's part of a hero's journey right your your voice and then we move on to you know we write through um the heart and the sacrum and the liver which is your teenager you know your liver is the one that says come on let's go out we haven't been out in a really long time you know how about a bloody merry on sunday i mean that's your liver and so all these great stories come out through these very unique methods of um of topical writing so we do the body i've done quantum physics which is wonderful for a story because time is bendable um all of our lives have a big bang in them which some call your Saturn return but you know we we explore all these avenues into stories so that it's easy to find your story i will tell all viewers that if you do anticipate joining one of Laura's classes do it at the soonest opportunity because you sell out you sell out and then the add days you have to add more days more what happens yes i mean sometimes i i i like to tell people it's more a rumor that you can't get into my classes than a reality because if you contact me and say i really want to be in your class i'll put you on a wait list because if you miss the window right um my current students have the first right to sign up you know so i give them a couple weeks and then i open it to the available spots to people who've been waiting and then it opens to the public and usually by the time it opens to a public there are a few spots but you know so um if you let me know i find a way in for you and i also have wonderful teachers who are um elizabeth becker and robin gadeon are teachers and they are amazing robin gadeon's an amazing poet elizabeth becker is a chaplain and specializes in grief work so you know they're wonderful facilitators teaching the same curriculum special guests come in too like ellen bass and other dorian lux ellen bass some of the guests looked at the time and you have a few more things that we want to talk about okay what's on your horizon oh well i i showcase my student work so i would like to tell you that my student work is some of the best contemporary writing in the world today and i'm not bragging because it's their writing not my writing okay some of my students will just um i you know the only reason they don't have a book out yet is they don't have enough material yet so i take some of the best writing from each series and i do spoken word shows that are live on facebook and if you follow me on facebook it's very easy to find everything that going on in in this literary world so i have a i have an event july 17th it's my my birthday is the 18th and i'm this is my gift to myself to showcase some of my favorite writers and um yeah and amy saucer your facebook page is laura lens right ellen tz god i don't know any other name i believe it is laura lens but there's like several laura lenses let me just see um yeah i i don't know i have it right here hold on i yeah it says laura lens editor writer teacher um i don't know the url though i had it i should know i have a couple like i have this author page i never knew you know but i because you're at your body you have it around yeah that's another facebook page i have literati academy but um that's my company and then uh all this is under the umbrella of literati academy but my personal page is where i you know engage with so many beautiful people from all over the world and my writers are come from all over the world i have writers in nine countries um probably 15 states you know laura dot lens dot six that's it laura dot lens dot six and so anyway my my events are free like uh my um spoken word events are 30 minutes we keep it short and um i have writers writing about their bodies breaking their bodies healing um body intuition and really um i have a wonderful sexy piece coming into this one i don't shy away from sexual content or stories in my classes um we we we allow everything that wants to come out to come out that's the beauty of you i have to say that's the beauty of you now you're also going to be at the quite writer's conference in november and you're going to start doing facebook live author interviews yeah i am with and the authors yeah the authors of my facebook live interviews are writers um who've put out books on writing so we talk about writing in them and the first one is going to be with my first writing teacher ever was nancy erinie probably 30 years ago maybe longer 35 years ago and um nancy erinie just published a book about grieving and memoir you know how grief is a part of memoir and it's a beautiful book and i'm interviewing her i'm not sure when but soon okay and probably in august and um yeah and i will be interviewing writers who are who write about writing what would you like to leave the viewers with laura lens about story quest about litterati academy i would like to leave them with a story um about writing 40 seconds wait 40 seconds i want to say that every story matters if you don't think you're a writer then that's a bad critic inside your head that you need to get out and i can help you do that um you know i had a very famous teacher once say to me driving her to the airport don't you hate those students you know they're never going to be able to write and it was like a knife in my heart because i don't know those students they come in and they practice and they become extraordinary writers so there is no such thing and that's that's a literary um snobbishness mary oliver was shunned by the literary world while whitman published his own poetry don't let anybody tell you anything about not being able to write you can write and your story matters that's what i want to all right we must go aloha i would love to have you back again there's so much to talk about with you it's always so exciting i want to thank everyone at think tech hawaii for supporting the program and all of us thank you thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii dot com mahalo