Substantive editing sample 60:
Introduction to Your Story Told

In this guide to creative writing that incorporates the author's memoir, there were problems with emphasis, coherence, structure, style, terminology, other word choice, and the accuracy and proper citation of quotations.

Skip this sample and advance to the next one in the series.

This sample is presented here with the author’s permission.

Original
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This book is both memoir and creative workbook. The memoir comes from stories I began telling myself a long time ago and, gradually through my training as a writer, was able to bring out into the world. The worksheets draw both from my experience as a writer struggling to express her own ideas and as a teacher helping students identify and develop the raw materials of personal experience into well-crafted stories. As you read through this book, you will be invited to think about the characters and circumstances that have shaped your own life. Nine worksheets interspersed throughout the book, address both creative process – how you mine your own experience for important material – and narrative structure – how you transform the raw material of observation and experience into coherent and compelling story form. While the process and the product are equally necessary to your creative journey, a cultural tendency exists in most of us – an impatience encouraged by the age of three-second Google searches – to focus on the product rather than the process of exploration. The early worksheets will encourage you to put aside your concern with end results and spend time instead cultivating a relationship with your own, unique, creative process. Later worksheets will offer guidance on developing and editing your material. I am nothing, if not a storyteller. For me, the complex significance of the world and my own place in it, makes sense only when seen through story. In my world, there is always a heroine with a burning desire. My first heroines were characters in the stories I read: Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia, Meg in a Wrinkle in Time and so on. Later, as my self-awareness matured, I became the heroine of my own story, a young woman cast out in the world to obtain crucial knowledge, bring it back home and awaken the inhabitants of her castle from the deepest slumber. In many fairytales, the castle is the starting point of the heroine’s journey; most frequently she is a princess but she can also be a more lowly-born inhabitant with a mission. Reading C.G. Jung in my twenties, I was fascinated to discover that the castle is an archetypal representation (a symbol existing at a level of the Collective Unconscious) of the human body and mind – not only our physical manifestation but our emotional and energetic layers as well. At this point, I began to understand that the hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories I’d devoured over the years of childhood into adolescence, from the Grimm Brothers to Andrew Lang, Hans Anderson, C.S. Lewis and others, were all coded discussions of the hero and heroine’s journeys of self-recovery; the waking of self awareness. Your Story Told; Writing for Personal Evolution is my story of self-recovery and waking awareness. The stories in this book are both personal and mythic: stations in a journey towards authentic identity. The castle from which I begin my journey is the world of ballet, literally from the high towers of Carnegie Hall where my mother and aunt, two beautiful and ambitious black women (princesses), lived out partially realized dreams of becoming ballet dancers during an era of still-intense segregation in this country. From childhood into young adulthood, the struggles of my mother and aunt dominated my personal horizon – so compelling were their narratives. Unlike the heroines of my favorite stories, my own mission was unclear: I was not trying to save a Scientist-father trapped in another dimension, or rescue a magical world of talking beasts. And, although I longed for a place that felt like home, unlike Dorothy, I had no idea of its coordinates. Launching myself into the wide world at the age of 16 when I left for college, I knew only one thing about my mission: there was crucial information to obtain. In fairytales and myths of all kinds, the heroine often has to escape from some form of enchantment herself while in the process of saving others. Half the battle is overcoming the spell or some form of overwhelming magic that takes control of the seeker and pulls her from her path. The enchantment cast upon me came from my own mother through emotionally persuasive stories repeated so frequently they began to feel like my own. My mother’s central story, the creation myth of her adult life, was her thwarted opportunity to dance with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. My mother and her twin sister, Marianne, had auditioned and were offered small roles by the company choreographer but, ultimately, were barred from performing because this country was not prepared to accept black men or women onto the ballet stage in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In fact, it required the appearance of brilliant and charismatic dancers like Arthur Mitchell, founder of Harlem Dance Theater and Alvin Ailey, founder of the Alvin Ailey School and company to begin making inroads on that world in the late sixties and seventies. My mother’s stories of rejection penetrated my imagination and imbued my world with emotions and expectations that were not my own. Like my fairytale counterparts, a crucial part of my journey has been in breaking free of this enchantment to see the world directly through my own eyes. The great mythologist and story-gatherer, Joseph Campbell, wrote that “the hero is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his (or her) personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms…” Though I did not understand this statement when I first encountered it, I was intrigued by the implication that I might someday find a way to find a way to feel ‘valid’ and ‘normal’ in the world. My mission began to clarify: I desired reconciliation of the warring factions within my own castle – to fully articulate a bi-racial perspective that no one, including my mother, seemed ready to understand and to heal very negative feelings that drove me to compulsive, self-destructive behaviors. Each one of us undertakes some version of this Hero’s Journey – the challenge is to recognize the specifics of journey as it presents for you. Our culture has, to a great degree, lost touch with the guidance and wisdom handed down to us through myth and fairytale. We no longer value or understand our lives within the symbolic and archetypal frameworks that guided generations upon generations of our forbears. Perhaps these stories were left behind in the massive migrations to the New World where the primary goal was assimilation. But these stories, as C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell remind us in their prodigious writing, are important keys to understanding our own lives at an individual and collective level. Mythic structure offers a psychological template that we must customize to fit our own circumstances. This book is one such customized template. Many others have come before. These stories come from my life experience. They are true stories that I have shaped and organized to foreground my emotional truths. This shaping and organizing of a life’s progress is both a creative and a healing act. In his book, Coyote Wisdom, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PH.D and Native American Healer, talks about his use of storytelling and ceremony to help his patients create their own healing narratives. He describes his observations of the healing process as a “continual negotiation and re-working of each individual’s stories into a more balanced and harmonious whole.” Stories, according to Mehl-Madrona, “contain the secrets for how we transform… . the wisdom that teaches us to change…” When I first began writing the stories that would become Writing for Personal Evolution my intention was to understand and make peace between deeply conflicted elements of my own persona. Articulating the true text of my life, I believed, would allow me to re-envision myself; to reveal an essential coherence, and perhaps beauty, buried beneath layers of chaos and dysfunction. What emerged from this undertaking, as important to me as the stories themselves, was a recognition that the same creative process through which my stories were able to unfold -- the integration of different often conflicting voices -- is the process which underlies all transformative activities. Allowing all voices a place at my table – the loud and dominant side by side with the quiet, near forgotten – brought a fuller, wiser spectrum to my writing and, miraculously, to my self-perception as well. Writing with the intention of fearlessness and truth allowed me, in the words of Louis Mehl-Madrone, “to establish a new root metaphor.” Authoring my own story, gave me a way to reclaim my castle and free its inhabitants. I hope you will enjoy the story I’ve shaped from the chaos of my own experience and, more importantly, I hope that you will feel inspired to begin or continue with your own explorations into the rich and mysterious realm of Self.

Markup
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This book is both memoir and creative workbook. The creative worksheets. [you call them "worksheets" from now on, never "workbook" again, so let's stay with a consistent terminology; the singular "is" before "both" is OK] The memoir comes from stories memoir emerged out of stories [change OK?] I began telling myself a long time ago and, gradually through my training as a writer, was able to bring out into the world. The worksheets draw both from my experience as [this is a "both X and Y" structure; your "both from... as... and as..." is poor parallelism; this should be "from my experience both as... and as..."; an alternative, too wordy, would be "both from my experience as... and from my experience as..."] draw from my experience both as a writer struggling to express her own ideas and as a teacher helping students identify and develop the raw materials of personal experience into well-crafted stories identify the raw materials of personal experience and develop them into well-crafted stories. [your structure implied that the materials can be identified into stories as well as developed into stories] As you read through this book, you will be invited to think about the characters and circumstances that have shaped your own life. Nine worksheets interspersed [There are now ten worksheets in the manuscript] life. Ten worksheets, interspersed throughout the book, address both creative process – how process, how [Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) strongly recommends no more than two dashes within a sentence; in this case, commas to set off the appositives, are sufficient] you mine your own experience for important material – and material, and narrative structure – how structure, how you transform the raw material of observation and experience into coherent and compelling story form. [In the preceding sentence you have identified two things that the book addresses, process and structure. In the sentence that follows you are contrasting those two things, but you call them process and product. Apparently, structure is the same as product--right? You should be consistent with your terminology; decide on either structure ("narrative structure") or product, or use some other umbrella term that encompasses both ideas, or in the preceding sentence add an appositive phrase to tie "product" to "narrative structure." But also consider another solution I propose with the next sentence.] While the process and the product are Though both are [(1) "While" can be misread as applying to something happening at the same time as something else, so I restrict it to that meaning; (2) OK to subsume the two words process and product (or process and structure) here under "both"? you have just mentioned them, and at the end of the sentence you emphasize them with italics; the italics should be restricted if possible to the first instance of the terms, and in this context that first instance should be at the end of the sentence] equally necessary to your creative journey, a cultural tendency exists in most of us – an us—an [this is Chicago's recommended treatment of dashes, an em dash, closed on both sides, to set off appositive or explanation material (this is what you are doing here), an en dash (the shorter one, which you were using) for number ranges or for meta-hyphens (for example, "pre–Civil War novels")] impatience encouraged by the age of three-second Google searches – to searches—to focus on the product rather than [a possible solution to the inconsistent terminology (see my comment with the previous sentence) might be "to focus on the product of narrative structure rather than ..." shall I change?] the process of exploration of creative exploration. [OK? this helps to tie your process here with your creative process in the previous sentence] The early worksheets will encourage you to put aside your concern with end results and spend time instead cultivating a relationship with your own, unique, creative own, unique creative process. [CMS 6.33 (which will be referred to later, too): "[W]hen a noun is preceded by two or more adjectives that could, without affecting the meaning, be joined by and, the adjectives are normally separated by commas," and CMS 5.90: "A coordinate adjective is one that appears in a sequence with one or more related adjectives to modify the same noun. Coordinate adjectives should be separated by commas or by and ('skilled, experienced chess player'; 'nurturing and loving parent'). But if one adjective modifies the noun and another adjective modifies the idea expressed by the combination of the first adjective and the noun, the adjectives are not considered coordinate and should not be separated by a comma. For example, 'a lethargic soccer player' describes a soccer player who is lethargic. Likewise, phrases such as 'red brick house' and 'wrinkled canvas jacket' are unpunctuated because the adjectives are not coordinate: They have no logical connection in sense (a red house could be made of many different materials, so could a wrinkled jacket). The most useful test is this: If and would fit between the two adjectives, a comma is necessary." In this case, "unique" and "creative" are not coordinate adjectives, because the conjunction and could not have been put between them (you have been using the term "creative process" as a unit)--so no comma should separate them; on the other hand, "own" and "unique" are coordinate adjectives (the conjunction and could be inserted between them)] Later worksheets will offer guidance on developing and editing your material. I am nothing, if [a restrictive "if" phrase at the end of the sentence or clause should not be set off with a comma] nothing if not a storyteller. For me, the complex significance of the world and my own place in it, makes it makes [don't separate subject from predicate with a comma; alternatively, put a comma between "world" and "and my" (then the comma between "it" and "makes" would be OK)] sense only when seen through story. In my world, there is always a heroine with a burning desire. My first heroines were characters in the stories I read: Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia, Meg in a Wrinkle in Time and in The Wizard of Oz, Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia, Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, and so on. Later, as my self-awareness matured, I became the heroine of my own story, a young woman cast out in the world to obtain crucial knowledge, bring it back home and home, and [CMS (in contrast to the AP style used by newspapers) strongly recommends series comma ("a, b, and/or c" rather than "a, b and/or c") to alleviate possible ambiguity] awaken the inhabitants of her castle from the deepest slumber. In many fairytales, the castle is the starting point of the heroine’s journey; most frequently she is a princess but princess, but she can also be a more lowly-born inhabitant with a mission. [paragraph break here, to give the reader some fresh air] Reading C.G. Jung Reading C. G. Jung in my twenties, I was fascinated to discover that the castle is an archetypal representation (a symbol existing at a level at the level of the Collective Unconscious) of the human body and mind – not mind—not [or maybe a comma instead of a dash?] only our physical manifestation but our emotional and energetic layers as well. At this point, I began to understand that the hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories I’d devoured over the years of childhood into adolescence, from the Grimm Brothers to the brothers Grimm to Andrew Lang, Hans Anderson, C.S. Lewis and Hans Christian Andersen, Andrew Lang, C. S. Lewis, and others, [my changes to the names, to conform to Chicago and to usual literary reference; also Andersen (note spelling) should come before Lang (his lifespan was earlier)] were all coded discussions of the hero and heroine’s journeys of self-recovery; the waking of self awareness self-recovery, the awakening of self-awareness. Your Story Told; Writing Told: Writing for Personal Evolution is my story of self-recovery and waking awareness and awakening awareness. ["waking awareness" would be a redundancy; "awakening" implies a process, which I think is your intended meaning] The stories in this book are both personal and mythic: stations in a journey towards authentic journey toward [CMS: American rather than British style (same with forward, backward, inward, outward, afterward, northward, upward, downward...)--I see that you have been consistent throughout with -wards rather than -ward, so you will see my markup in each instance, enforcing American style] authentic identity. The castle from which I begin my journey is the world of ballet, literally from the high towers of Carnegie Hall where Hall, where [comma needed to set off a nonrestrictive clause (there is, of course, only one Carnegie Hall, and that is where your mother and aunt lived out their dreams--not the restrictive situation, where there is more than one Carnegie Hall and you are specifying which Carnegie Hall you are talking about, the one where your mother and aunt lived their dreams, not any of the other Carnegie Halls)] my mother and aunt, two beautiful and ambitious black women (princesses), lived out partially realized dreams of becoming ballet dancers during an era of still-intense segregation in this country. From childhood into young adulthood, the struggles adulthood, my personal horizon was dominated by the struggles of [here is a case where passive voice is better, to avoid the infamous "dangling-modifier" misreading (the "struggles" did not have a childhood or young adulthood); alternatively, you could put "my" before both "childhood" and "young adulthood"; also: can a "horizon" be "dominated"? how about "circumscribed"? shall I change?] my mother and aunt dominated my personal horizon – so aunt—so [or maybe a comma instead of a dash?] compelling were their narratives. Unlike the heroines of my favorite stories, my own mission was [your version compares "mission" with "heroines"] the missions of my favorite heroines, my own was [no need to repeat "mission"] unclear: I was not trying to save a Scientist-father trapped a scientist father trapped in another dimension, or rescue a magical world of talking beasts. And, although And—although [here is a very good use of dashes to set off a clause; with commas, your "unlike Dorothy" might modify (incorrectly) the text preceding it rather than (correctly) the text following it] I longed for I did long [emphatic form preferable here, to emphasize comparison with Dorothy] for a place that felt like home, unlike home—unlike Dorothy, I had no idea of its coordinates. Launching myself into the wide world at the age of 16 when of sixteen, when I left for college, I knew only one thing about my mission: there was [when the text following a colon is an independent clause (could be a complete sentence by itself), start it with a capital] mission: There was crucial information to obtain. In fairytales and myths of all kinds, the heroine often has kinds, often the heroine herself has to escape from some form of enchantment herself while enchantment while in the process of saving others. [or: "... kinds, the heroine, while in the process of saving others, often has to escape from some form of enchantment herself." (that puts the emphasis where it belongs, and improves coherence with the sentence that follows)-- shall I change?. Also, consider cutting "in the process of" as extraneous deadwood-- shall I change?] Half the battle is overcoming the spell or some spell, some form of overwhelming magic that takes control of the seeker and pulls her from her path. The enchantment cast upon me came from my path. My enchantment was cast by my own mother through emotionally mother, [the revision makes your mother more of an actor] through her emotionally persuasive stories repeated stories, repeated so frequently they frequently that they began to feel like my own. [paragraph break here, to give the reader some fresh air] My mother’s central story, the creation myth of her adult life, was her thwarted opportunity to dance with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. My mother and My mother, Molly, and her twin sister, Marianne, had sister, Marianne (renamed Ellen), [you refer to her as Ellen hereafter, but it's best to introduce the formal names, both M names for twins, here--but it's good to identify Ellen like this right here, too] had auditioned and were offered small roles by the company choreographer but, ultimately, were barred from performing because this country was not prepared to accept black men or women onto the ballet stage in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the 1950s and 1960s. [per CMS, no apostrophe] In fact, it required the it would require the appearance of brilliant of such brilliant and charismatic dancers like Arthur dancers as Arthur Mitchell, founder of Harlem Dance Theater and of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Alvin Ailey, founder of the Alvin Ailey School and company to Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, to begin making inroads on that world in the late sixties and seventies. My late 1960s and 1970s. [you had "1950s and early 1960s" in the preceding sentence, so let's stay consistent throughout. This is the best style (because in the section "Shades of Contrast" in the "New World II" chapter, you wrote, discussing Saul Bellow, "the teens or twenties" which I changed to "the 1910s or 1920s" because "teens" can now be confused with the 2010s.] My mother’s stories of rejection penetrated my imagination and imbued my world with emotions and expectations that were not my own. Like my own. As with my fairytale counterparts, ["Like" makes "counterparts" a simile with "crucial part"] a crucial part of my journey has been in breaking been the breaking free ["breaking free" as a gerund noun, preceded by "the," is needed logically to be an equivalent ("has been") with the noun "part"] of this enchantment to [comma needed to set off nonrestrictive information: You break free from the enchantment, and the result is that you get to see the world through your own eyes] enchantment, to see the world directly through my own eyes. The great mythologist and story-gatherer, Joseph and story gatherer, Joseph Campbell, wrote that “the hero is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his (or her) personal his [or her] [square brackets required, because "or her" are your words, not Campbell's] personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms…” Though forms…”1 [you need the endnote (or footnote) reference here for this citation] Though I did not understand this statement when I first encountered it, I was intrigued by the implication that I might someday find a way to find a way to way to feel ‘valid’ and ‘normal’ in feel “valid” and “normal” in the world. My mission began to clarify: I desired reconciliation desired a reconciliation of the warring factions within my own castle – to castle—to fully articulate a bi-racial perspective that no a biracial perspective, which [nonrestrictive modifying clause, to emphasize the biracial perspective by itself] no one, including my mother, seemed ready to understand and understand, and to heal very negative feelings that drove me that were driving me [my revision puts the compulsive behaviors in the proper time perspective with the healing] to compulsive, self-destructive behaviors. Each one of us undertakes some version of this Hero’s Journey – the this hero’s journey; [semicolons, not dashes, for fastening two closely related independent clauses (without a conjunction joining them)] the challenge is to recognize the specifics of journey of the journey as it presents for you. Our presents itself to us. Our culture has, to a great degree, lost touch with the guidance and wisdom handed down to us through myth and fairytale. We no longer value or understand [consider "understand or value" --as a more realistic order (we value something after we understand it)-- shall I change?] our lives within the symbolic and archetypal frameworks that guided generations upon generations of our forbears. Perhaps these stories were left behind in the ["left behind in" implies that the stories were lost maybe on the ships; actually they were left behind in the old country--right? but "during" specifies the time that they were left behind] behind during the massive migrations to the New World where the World, where the primary goal was assimilation. [paragraph break here, for fresh air to the reader] But these stories, as C.G. Jung as C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell remind us in their prodigious writing, are important keys to understanding our own lives at an at both an individual and collective and a [article "a" needed here to avoid the implied "an collective" ("an" applying to both adjectives)] collective level. Mythic structure offers a psychological template that we template, which [nonrestrictive modifying clause, to emphasize the template by itself, which you refer to in the next sentence] we must customize to fit our own circumstances. This book is one such customized template. Many others have come before. These stories come from my [your version can be misread, that the stories of your life experience come from the "many others" that have "come before"] The stories here come out of my life experience. They are true stories that I stories, which [again, nonrestrictive modifying clause, to emphasize that the stories are true] I have shaped and organized to foreground my to bring to the foreground my emotional truths. [(1) I can accept "foreground" as a verb, but some readers will decry that use; (2) paragraph break here, to give your reader fresh air--and to highlight Mehl-Madrona's book in its own paragraph] This shaping and organizing of a life’s progress is both a creative and a healing act. In his book, Coyote Wisdom, Lewis book [no comma here, because he has written more than one book, and you are specifying one of the books he wrote (restrictive information, not to be set off with commas)] Coyote Wisdom: The Power Story in Healing, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PH.D and MD, Ph.D, and Native American Healer, talks American healer, talks about his use of storytelling and ceremony to help his patients create their own healing narratives. He describes his observations of the healing process as a “continual negotiation and re-working of and reworking of each individual’s stories into a more into more balanced and harmonious whole.” Stories, according to Mehl-Madrona, “contain [no need to repeat the author's name here] harmonious combinations.” Stories “contain the secrets for how we transform… . the transform… the wisdom that teaches us to change…” to change…”2 When I first began writing the stories that would become Writing for Personal Evolution my become Your Story Told, my intention was to understand and make peace between deeply conflicted elements of my own persona. Articulating the true text of my life, I believed, would allow me ["allow" connotes permission; capability, not permission, should be implied] would enable me to re-envision myself; to to reenvision [no hyphen, per CMS and Webster's] myself; to myself—to [again, semicolons are for fastening two closely related independent clauses; here, however, you have an appositive phrase modifying "reenvision"] reveal an essential coherence, and perhaps beauty, buried beneath layers of chaos and dysfunction. What emerged from this undertaking, as important to me as the stories themselves, was a recognition that the same creative process through which my stories were able to unfold -- the unfold—the integration of different often different, often conflicting [per CMS 5.90 and 6.33: these are coordinate adjectives; you could put and between "different" and "often conflicting"--so a comma is needed] voices -- is voices—is [the two dashes in this sentence could be changed to commas, without any loss in coherence or emphasis, whereas the dashes in the preceding and the following sentence are more necessary. Perhaps we should use commas here, so as not to overdo the dashes in the paragraph. Shall I change?] the process which underlies ["which" preceded by a comma to set off nonrestrictive information; "that" with no comma before it to specify restrictive information (information needed to understand what you mean by the noun referred to (to specify what you mean by "process")] process that underlies all transformative activities. Allowing [this "allowing" is appropriate, since you are implying permission] all voices a place at my table – the table—the loud and dominant side by side with the quiet, near forgotten – brought quiet, nearly forgotten—brought a fuller, wiser spectrum to my writing and, miraculously, to my self-perception as well. Writing with the intention of fearlessness and truth allowed me [again, capability, rather than permission, should be implied] truth enabled me, in the words of Louis Mehl-Madrone, “to of Lewis Mehl-Madrone, “to establish a new root metaphor.” Authoring new ‘paradigm’ or ‘root metaphor.’”3 Authoring my own story, gave story gave me a way to reclaim my castle and free its inhabitants. I hope you will enjoy the story I’ve [more than one story--right?] the stories I’ve shaped from the chaos of my own experience and, more importantly, I hope that you will feel inspired to begin or continue with your own explorations into the rich and mysterious realm of Self. 1 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 382. [My Google search for your quotation led me to David Adam Leeming's Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero, which included the quote, verbatim, from Campbell and at the end of the chapter had the page reference to Campbell's book. I assume you will not have a bibliography, as apparently Leeming's book does (although Google wouldn't let me see it), so in this place, you need publisher, city of publisher, and year of publication of the edition of Campbell's book that has the quotation on that specific page. (See endnote 2.) Do you have Leeming's book (or Campbell's) to provide it for me? (and I will style it in this endnote in the second pass of the edit)] 2 Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Coyote Wisdom: The Power of Story in Healing (Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2005), p. 2. 3 Ibid., p. 153.

Result
The author accepted almost all my suggested revisions, although there were a couple we negotiated over.
Click to go to the next sample in the series.

This book is both a memoir and a creative workbook. The memoir emerged from stories I began telling myself a long time ago and, gradually through my training as a writer, was able to bring out into the world. The worksheets draw from my experience both as a writer struggling to express her own ideas and as a teacher helping students identify the raw materials of personal experience and develop them into well-crafted stories. As you read through this book, you will be invited to think about the characters and circumstances that have shaped your own life. Ten worksheets, interspersed throughout the book, address both creative process, how you mine your own experience for important material, and narrative structure, how you transform the raw material of observation and experience into coherent and compelling story form. Though both are equally necessary to your creative journey, a cultural tendency exists in most of us—an impatience encouraged by the age of three-second Google searches—to focus on the product of narrative structure rather than the process of creative exploration. The early worksheets will encourage you to put aside your concern with end results and spend time instead cultivating a relationship with your own, unique creative process. Later worksheets will offer guidance on developing and editing your material. I am nothing if not a storyteller. For me, the complex significance of the world and my own place in it makes sense only when seen through story. In my world, there is always a heroine with a burning desire. My first heroines were characters in the stories I read: Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia, Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, and so on. Later, as my self-awareness matured, I became the heroine of my own story, a young woman cast out in the world to obtain crucial knowledge, bring it back home, and awaken the inhabitants of her castle from the deepest slumber. In many fairytales, the castle is the starting point of the heroine’s journey; most frequently she is a princess, but she can also be a more lowly-born inhabitant with a mission. Reading C. G. Jung in my twenties, I was fascinated to discover that the castle is an archetypal representation (a symbol existing at the level of the Collective Unconscious) of the human body and mind—not only our physical manifestation but our emotional and energetic layers as well. At this point, I began to understand that the hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories I’d devoured over the years of childhood into adolescence, from the brothers Grimm to Hans Christian Andersen, Andrew Lang, C. S. Lewis, and others, were all coded discussions of the hero and heroine’s journeys of self-recovery, the awakening of self-awareness. Your Story Told: Writing for Personal Evolution is my story of self-recovery and awakening awareness. The stories in this book are both personal and mythic: stations in a journey toward authentic identity. The castle from which I begin my journey is the world of ballet, literally from the high towers of Carnegie Hall, where my mother and aunt, two beautiful and ambitious black women (princesses), lived out partially realized dreams of becoming ballet dancers during an era of still-intense segregation in this country. From childhood into young adulthood, my personal horizon was circumscribed by the struggles of my mother and aunt, so compelling were their narratives. Unlike the missions of my favorite heroines, my own was unclear: I was not trying to save a scientist father trapped in another dimension, or rescue a magical world of talking beasts. And—although I did long for a place that felt like home—unlike Dorothy, I had no idea of its coordinates. Launching myself into the wide world at the age of sixteen, when I left for college, I knew only one thing about my mission: There was crucial information to obtain. In fairytales and myths of all kinds, the heroine, while in the process of saving others, often has to escape from some form of enchantment herself. Half the battle is overcoming the spell, some form of overwhelming magic that takes control of the seeker and pulls her from her path. My enchantment was cast by my own mother, through her emotionally persuasive stories, repeated so frequently that they began to feel like my own. My mother’s central story, the creation myth of her adult life, was her thwarted opportunity to dance with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. My mother, Molly, and her twin sister, Marianne (renamed Ellen), had auditioned and were offered small roles by the company choreographer but, ultimately, were barred from performing because this country was not prepared to accept black men or women onto the ballet stage in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, it would require the appearance of such brilliant and charismatic dancers as Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Alvin Ailey, founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, to begin making inroads on that world in the late 1960s and 1970s. My mother’s stories of rejection penetrated my imagination and imbued my world with emotions and expectations that were not my own. As with my fairytale counterparts, a crucial part of my journey has been the breaking free of this enchantment, to see the world directly through my own eyes. The great mythologist and story gatherer, Joseph Campbell, wrote that “the hero is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his [or her] personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms…”1 Though I did not understand this statement when I first encountered it, I was intrigued by the implication that I might someday find a way to feel “valid” and “normal” in the world. My mission began to clarify: I desired a reconciliation of the warring factions within my own castle—to fully articulate a biracial perspective, which no one, including my mother, seemed ready to understand, and to heal very negative feelings that were driving me to compulsive, self-destructive behaviors. Each one of us undertakes some version of this hero’s journey; the challenge is to recognize the specifics of the journey as it presents itself to us. Our culture has, to a great degree, lost touch with the guidance and wisdom handed down to us through myth and fairytale. We no longer understand or value our lives within the symbolic and archetypal frameworks that guided generations upon generations of our forbears. Perhaps these stories were left behind during the massive migrations to the New World, where the primary goal was assimilation. But these stories, as C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell remind us in their prodigious writing, are important keys to understanding our own lives at both an individual and a collective level. Mythic structure offers a psychological template, which we must customize to fit our own circumstances. This book is one such customized template. Many others have come before. The stories here come out of my life experience. They are true stories, which I have shaped and organized to bring to the foreground my emotional truths. This shaping and organizing of a life’s progress is both a creative and a healing act. In his book Coyote Wisdom: The Power Story in Healing, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, Ph.D, and Native American healer, talks about his use of storytelling and ceremony to help his patients create their own healing narratives. He describes his observations of the healing process as a “continual negotiation and reworking of each individual’s stories into more balanced and harmonious combinations.” Stories “contain the secrets for how we transform… the wisdom that teaches us to change…”2 When I first began writing the stories that would become Your Story Told, my intention was to understand and make peace between deeply conflicted elements of my own persona. Articulating the true text of my life, I believed, would enable me to reenvision myself—to reveal an essential coherence, and perhaps beauty, buried beneath layers of chaos and dysfunction. What emerged from this undertaking, as important to me as the stories themselves, was a recognition that the same creative process through which my stories were able to unfold, the integration of different, often conflicting voices, is the process that underlies all transformative activities. Allowing all voices a place at my table—the loud and dominant side by side with the quiet, nearly forgotten—brought a fuller, wiser spectrum to my writing and, miraculously, to my self-perception as well. Writing with the intention of fearlessness and truth enabled me, in the words of Lewis Mehl-Madrone, “to establish a new ‘paradigm’ or ‘root metaphor.’”3 Authoring my own story gave me a way to reclaim my castle and free its inhabitants. I hope you will enjoy the stories I’ve shaped from the chaos of my own experience and, more importantly, I hope that you will feel inspired to begin or continue with your own explorations into the rich and mysterious realm of Self. 1 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949, 1968), p. 382. 2 Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Coyote Wisdom: The Power of Story in Healing (Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2005), p. 2. 3 Ibid., p. 153.