When I was struggling over my ridiculously long 140,000-word manuscript of The Burning Light of Two Stars, wondering what the hell to do with all the words, scenes, and stories I’d written over the course of many years, my coach, Joshua Townshend, gave me an assignment that I’d frequently given my own students. What he told me what to do was obvious and simple; I saw the wisdom in it right away.
Since I was writing a mother-daughter story, and the whole memoir was seen though that lens, Joshua had me brainstorm a list of the most memorable, significant moments in my relationship with my mother. He further instructed, “Identify moments in which you made a decision, when something changed inside you or between you, events after which the trajectory of your relationship was no longer the same.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? Because I was stuck, and we can’t always apply what we know to our own work.
The next week, I came to my coaching call with the following list:
- When I came out to my mother on the railroad tracks in Miami Beach
- When I invited her to come to California and said, “I want to take care of you when you’re old.”
- When I started screaming at her on West Cliff
- When she was dying and we traveled down the tunnel together
- When I was lying on the floor of the meditation shack at Commonweal and got the message that I had to go home
- When I washed her body
- When I called and told her that her father had abused me
- When she called me back and screamed at me that I couldn’t have hurt her worse if I’d shot her
- When she left the seder and stormed out because we wished for peace for the Palestinians
- When she shit all over the bathroom in Florida
- When I drugged her on the plane to make her sleep
- When she said, “Go ahead and tell our story darling. It had a happy ending.”
- When I decided to go receive knowledge at 15 and didn’t come home until late at night and found her crying at the kitchen table
- When I wrote to tell her that Guru Maharaj Ji was my true father and that his mother, Mata-ji, was my true mother
- When my mother told me that she left the False Memory Support Group meeting because they were talking trash about me
- The day mom confided in me in the car in the pouring rain
- When the little boy drowned at The Land Between the Lakes campground and she comforted me
- When I invited her to come visit right after Lizzy was born
- When she cried to me in the hospital emergency room, “When is it going to end? I just want it to be over!”
- When I slid into her bed in the ICU
- When we were fighting over her pills around the lime green counter in her condo
- When she didn’t know who I was
- Passing the Torah from grandmother to mother to daughter and son
- Her performance in the Vagina Monologues
- Getting stoned together in the blue living room
Generating this list brought the turning points in my relationship with my mother into sharp relief and provided an organizing principle for structuring my memoir. Honing and crafting these scenes over the next weeks and months provided a clear and useful focus. I was no longer just writing whatever occurred to me to write, whatever I “felt like” writing. My work on the book became more purposeful. I had a clear direction, doing work that I knew would bear valuable fruit.
I had already written early drafts of many of the scenes on my list, but these moments suddenly grew in importance when I realized that I could shape my story around them. The final version of these pivotal events would provide the spine of my narrative.
Not all of these scenes made it into the finished book; some ended up on the cutting room floor or were published elsewhere. But those of you familiar with The Burning Light of Two Stars will recognize many of these scenes as some of the most powerful, vivid chapters in the book. They’re memorable because of their drama and their significance, because they pushed me (as protagonist) or my mother (as antagonist) or both of us to extremes, forcing us to change, reconsider our point of view or behavior, or grow.
If you’re struggling to figure out what your story is about, try this exercise for yourself. Brainstorm the significant events and turning points in your story’s trajectory. The resulting list is pure gold—an essential step on the journey of finding the core narrative of your story.