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INTERVIEW: SHEILA BENDER
Author of Keeping A Journal You Love

Interview by Robert Yehling

Sheila Bender is the writing teacher we all wish we had in school. She's fashionable and cool as the Southern California lifestyle she espouses, a lover of good company and good nature, and equally skilled at teaching writer's conferences and workshops as she is in a college classroom. Her warm, ingratiating personality invites you to step into the writing experience with her, regardless of your talent level.

Then there's the poet side of Sheila. She moved into her current forte as a teacher of essays, non-fiction and poetics, and as publisher of the fine literary online magazine Writing It Real , from a poetry background in Washington state. In addition to her five books on writing in print (three of which were published by imprints of Writer's Digest Books), she's published two poetry collections. She knows the depth of experience required for poetry all too well. She's been to the heights of happiness through her experiences as writer, lover of life and parent; she's also been to the bottoms. One of the most courageous moments I've ever seen came in 2000, when she taught two workshops at the Society of Southwestern Authors conference in Tucson just after one of her children was killed in an accident. Somehow, her sense of commitment to the process of writing rose to the forefront just long enough to adorn the lives of her students; she doesn't remember much else about that weekend.

We spoke with Sheila as she took a break from her soon-to-be-published book on essay writing and marketing.

Bookstand: Your specialty as a writer, or at least what you build a lot of work around, is the essay. Could you talk about how and why this particular genre resonates so deeply with the way your creative process works?

Sheila Bender: I actually came to essay writing as a poet. I studied with many of today's finest poets at the University of Washington in the early 80's and received an MA in Creative Writing. With that degree, I was qualified to teach freshman composition at community colleges and I did this for many years. I enjoyed bringing the lessons I'd learned from poets to my students and found their essays becoming lyrical. Next, I saw the personal essay working as poems do and I have blended the genres in my writing life ever since. I'm not sure exactly what prompts a poem and what prompts an essay, but the feeling that comes over me when I begin each is quite different. That doesn't mean that both my poems and my essays don't touch on the same obsessions and subjects and experiences.

Q: What are three or four of the most important steps a young writer can take to insure that his/her creative process leads to well-developed works?

A: Read in many genres no matter what genre you think you are going to work in. Find the poets, playwrights, essayists, memoirists and fiction writers that that hook you. Ask teachers, colleagues, friends, parents, writers and bookstore owners for their suggestions. Read book reviews in newspapers and magazines for more suggestions. Next, sign up for a workshop or class in writing. Looking at other people's work-in-progress as well as having them respond to yours helps you move ahead in the revision process. Join a writing group so that you continue to have dedicated listeners for your-work-in progress and the deadlines of your meeting dates to motivate you. This way you will keep on writing and not let your writing slide to the bottom of your priority list. Find the instructional books out there that appeal to you and read them from time to time to get going, get new ideas, and for help thinking about writing. Never let reading them take the place of writing, however. Figure out where you are motivated to write and spend time in that place—whether it is in your car before you go into work, by a favorite window, in a busy coffee shop or outside on your deck. If you start favoring a different location, honor the change and write from the new location. I honestly think that spending even 10 minutes a day in one of those places (therefore make it easy to get to) can help you generate a lot of writing and once you do that, you'll want to develop the writing.

Q: How has your writing life and your personal life converged to bring you where you are now? What are some great life experiences in which the two came together?

A: My, this is a big question. I think that my writing life converged with my personal life when I started taking the advice my poems were delivering. If a poem was finished and I understood its message, I realized that to live authentically I would have to change. And I did. After years of writing myself real in relationships and actions, life gave me the opportunity to use my writing to deal with the death of my son. I spent six months writing poems about the loss, another two months writing prose about it, and then drowned myself in teaching and editing work to prove, I suppose, that I "could act like I was alive." Then I signed up for a course in writing taught by an actor. I think I realized intuitively that the class would offer just the opportunity I needed for more prose and poetry to come out from where I'd bottled up grief. I am of course more alive if I can bring all my feelings to the forefront, not bury them. And as long as I am alive, I owe it to my son to live and share the life force.

Q: Keeping a Journal You Love is one of those deliciously rare books on writing that connects with the gamut of readership, from a teenaged kid keeping a journal to a serious writer exploring themes and ideas. Why do you feel the journal is such a seductive vehicle for writing?

A: Those who like to use journals like doing so because they are not restricted by genre or an audience's eyes. However, without the craft of genre and the pressure of trying to make contact outside of one's own mind, we can grow stale as writers. That's why books like Keeping a Journal You Love are useful—they keep the journal writer infused with new approaches that will help them write more meaningfully from their experiences and have some fun doing it.

Q: Are there any set rules for journaling? Or, in your eyes, is the journal limited only by the furthest reaches of one's imagination and ideas

A: I certainly don't see limits. I think a journal can be written on 3 x 5 cards one keeps in a breast pocket like field biologists often do or on scrapes of paper stored in a box or bag as well as in notebooks and computer files. A journal keeper can use a grocery list to begin a meditation on the state of their marriage or create a to do list to reflect on their lives. In fact, the more we use the tools of our daily life to help ourselves journal, the more we will write, I believe.

Q: There are two sections in this book that really intrigue me. One is actually something you do throughout the book—bring in actually entries from 15 notable writers. The other is a little piece that shows how one of your interview subjects annotates his journal for future reference. Can you discuss both of these choices you made in this book, and how you hope the reader can broaden her/his journaling through the examples of others?

A: I think that it is easy to begin thinking that only amateurs journal. In fact, many professionals say that since their job is writing, they feel like they are wasting time if they keep a journal, that everything they write is for publication.

On the contrary, though, many professionals are avid journal keepers and so peek into what they are doing is reassuring. It also provides us with many ideas and strategies for keeping our own journals. When you get the opportunity to read other people's journals, especially the journals of writers, you can track the way they go about putting their thoughts on the page. My book offers 15 writers as examples and I have included many, many journaling exercises based on what these writers are doing in their entries.

In the journal entries novelist Robert Hellenga (author of The Sixteen Pleasures) shares, he reports what is going on in his journey to Italy and then writes notes to himself about how these happenings will be useful in the novel he is writing. I think it is interesting to note that journal keepers can think about their present and their future (their writing) in the same journal entry. Fiction writer Robin Hemley does this as well.

Q: What is your personal journal like? Do you follow any guidelines, or do you just brainstorm and let it fly?

A: My personal journal these days starts out with handwritten pieces that I quickly transfer from a spiral bound notebook to computer files because my handwriting is so poor I am afraid I won't be able to read what I have written for too long. I'll start something as an exercise for myself when I am away from my desk because to journal, I have to get away from the work email that is constantly coming in and commanding my attention. When I get back to my desk after journaling in the notebook, I enter the new writing into a file I named "My Writing—Journal Entries." Before I was working so much on a computer, I actually kept a box that was my journal. Things I'd written on notebook pages, envelopes, bank deposit slips and napkins ended up in the box. I'd comb through from time to time to see what would inspire more writing. I usually either free write or try a writing exercise of my own or another teacher when I make entries.

Q: You've written four other books on writing. In this market that has no shortage of writing books, and in this day and age, what do you think are the most important pieces of experience and advice you can impart to writers?

A: My most important advice is, "If you want to write, you can." I really believe that it is the desire and the attraction to writing that offers us the possibility of creating something compelling on the page. If you couldn't do it, you wouldn't be drawn to trying. Classes, groups, articles and books will help you accomplish your goal of writing and even if one teacher or one group or one article seems to imply that you are unable to reach your goal, you are not. You merely have to keep learning how to unlock the stories and poems and essays you have inside.

Q: You're very skilled at diving deep—not digressing when the going gets tough—and finding particular words or phrases to convey your visits to deep inner sanctum places. How can a writer get to that level that is enriched with life experience? What can they do to crack open their deepest heart, their deepest secrets? From your own experience, how does one "hang in there" and get it on paper when it really gets tough and painful?

A: When I teach and offer students exercises that work (similar to the ones in all of my books on writing), I am fond of saying, "Do this without a lot of investment." What I mean is, do the exercise and flow with it. Don't get hung up on the importance of what you are writing about and conjuring up. Once you notice the importance, you are likely to start judging your writing as not up to the task and then you will become diverted from your best writing. In my classes, students write for 20 minutes using exercises. They just keep writing and when I call time, they are amazed at what they have written about. When they read, tears often flow, both from them and their audience. This is writing from the deep voice and deep places. If you are writing well, the tears come after the writing, I think. Sometimes lately, I have been overwhelmed for days by the emotions my writing brings up, but that feeling of being overwhelmed didn't happen while I was writing. When I was writing, I was "just" writing. I think I invite this upon myself because I know that to constantly grow and evolve and mature I must bring my feelings forward and live them through vivid reflection on experience.

Q: Your how-to books on writing are well-researched and laden with contributions and comments from other writers. Then, in your new book on writing and publishing essays that Writer's Digest Books is publishing in Winter 2003, you have one chapter (Marketing Essays Online) that has comments from 25 people. This is different from the norm. Can you speak about the need for outside voices and good research in these types of books, and also how you are able to zero in with such pinpoint research for the topic at hand?

A: I believe that including other's voices and ideas is essential for offering the full story on writing. I have studied with many, many teachers and continue to do so. I have learned remarkable things from each. I have been in many writing groups because I keep moving (my husband's work has dictated this) and have learned from each of my group's members. In classes I teach, I have learned from classmates. I have learned from editors of publications that accepted my work. As a curator for a poetry on the bus project and a literary magazine editor, I have called upon others' expertise. When I teach at writer's conferences, I learn from other writers teaching with me. As a classroom teacher for many years, I always valued the input of my colleagues and of my students.

Q: You're a great teacher, a great editor and a great writer. This particular triad of skills is very uncommon. How do you draw from your personal writing experience to teach, and what have been your greatest moments of satisfaction as a teacher?

A: I think because I was a returning student at the university level when I started writing, I became particularly aware of my writing, shaping, and editing processes. I had two young children, a masters degree in teaching, and had been teaching and directing schools for years when I applied to and was accepted into David Wagoner's mixed level poetry writing workshop at the University of Washington. I hadn't felt like such a beginner for years and it wasn't comfortable. But I wanted to learn and the best way to learn was not to get hung up on any seeming cruelty in the way people and teachers made remarks about emerging writing. Instead, I learned to translate classmates' comments into a language I could use to make revisions and I began to develop a language of response that I felt was constructive rather than destructive. I know every trick there is, I think, for putting writing last, for avoiding what the writing wants to tell its author, and for judging one's own efforts poorly. I use this understanding to let new writers know that I am no different than they are. I have just learned my way around the blocks I put up and can teach them to get around theirs.

My greatest moments of satisfaction as a teacher are when students in my workshops write something grand and don't even realize it. They are thinking, "How could I have created something good in twenty minutes when I am a beginner?" But when they read to the group and we receive what they are saying and it moves us, they begin to believe in their writing. Being the catalyst and facilitator to that kind of event is immensely satisfying.

Q: What does Sheila Bender like to do when she's not writing or setting up a book? What are your fun outlets?

A: I would like to take this opportunity to say that writing is my most fun outlet. In fact, as I was drawing to the end of preparing my newest manuscript, I began Writing It Real, an online magazine, which anyone can access for seven sample articles at www.writingitreal.com. It is for people who write from personal experience. I create an article a week for this publication. I am enjoying offering my instruction in this format—I can show much more of the writing process than in a 1,000 word article and I can deliver my instruction more rapidly than in book form.

When I'm not writing, I am tending my container garden in LA where I spend most of my time now or gardening in the natural habitat I've planted at my home and writing retreat in Port Townsend , WA. I enjoy nurturing plants and learning about their needs. I guess I like making things grow. I also enjoy learning about plants of two contrasting temperature zones. I like paying attention to my cats, seeing movies, reading (memoir and essays and poetry especially) and developing ideas for TV scripts I believe I may one day sit down and write. My husband sings with the Angel City Chorale and I have been enjoying their performances and his at home rehearsing. He would probably have me add that I enjoy moving furniture around, as well.

Further Information:
• Excerpt from Keeping A Journal You Love
• Review of Keeping A Journal You Love