An Interview with Donna Van Straten Remmert*
By Lisa Shirah-Hiers
Donna
Van Straten Remmert is the author of The Littlest
Big Kid and The Jitterbug
Girl. She is a long-time member of the Story Circle Network and
past president of the Austin
chapter. Her professional background includes teaching high school English and
working as a journalist. For more than twenty years, she has pursued an
informal study of Jungian psychology, especially as it relates to dreams. The
hysterically funny third installment of her memoir, Head Over Heels: Stories about the 1950s, describes her transition from small town Catholic party girl to
campus co-ed at UW-Madison. She and her husband live in Boulder,
CO. Lisa Shirah-Hiers interviewed her via email for the Story Circle Journal.
SCJ: How do
you get your stories/memories out of your head and onto paper? How do you
organize them and when?
DVR: My
process is quite random. When a memory pops into my head, I scribble it on a
piece of paper, let the story marinate for a while, and then I start banging it
out. I’m always amazed how one small memory triggers another and another until
there’s a story that actually has a purpose. When I have several that are
somewhat complete, I decide where they belong in the book and how they need to
expand in order to reflect the era. I also add details about political or
cultural events, clothes, hairstyles, movies or book titles. I could save
myself a lot of time by outlining, but it’s
just not in my nature to do so. I usually share a rough draft of each story
with my writing circle and ask them to help me decide how to improve it and if
it serves a purpose within the book. This kind of support is such a great
motivator, and for an extravert like me it makes the writing process less
lonely.
SCJ: What
were some of the challenges you faced in writing your memoirs? How did you
overcome them?
DVR: I
didn’t want to offend people I wrote about, and I wanted my stories to have
pizzazz and reflect the culture as much as tell my own story. When I wrote The Littlest Big Kid and The Jitterbug Girl, I used last names
and got signed permission slips from everyone. I was amazed at how few
objections I experienced; they understood my humor and liked having their names
mentioned. The “kid” voice I’d used in
my first two memoirs had been such fun to remember and such a part of my humor
yet inappropriate for Head Over Heels. My
greatest challenge for this memoir was to find a voice that would be equally
entertaining and also sound like the college student I remember myself being.
Another challenge was to write the truth but limit the characters mentioned, so
my reader could make sense of the story being told. My solution was to use only
first names most of the time, allowing me to create composite characters. In my
disclaimer, I explain that while everything I wrote about actually did happen,
I’ve granted myself the freedom to invent characters when necessary, create
dialogue that is representative, and amplify and embellish scenes when
necessary for clarity and entertainment. My memoir is, therefore, creative
nonfiction. I think it’s more fun to read and more representative of the era
than if I had stuck too rigidly to the facts. Giving myself this freedom helped
me express more truth about how things were in the late 1950s.
SCJ: You
self-published all three of your memoirs. Can you speak about that process?
DVR: The new
catch phrase for someone who self-publishes is “indie,” short for independent.
Words matter, so that’s what I am––an indie;
and from what I can tell, the process is far easier, less stressful, and much more
fun than trying to find and then satisfy agents and publishers by laboring over
one re-write after another, until your book starts to feel like it isn’t yours
anymore. That’s my bias because that’s what I’ve witnessed from a few women in
my writing circle. I haven’t sent proposals to agents and engaged in that
process at all, but how would I respond if an agent or publisher approached me?
I think every writer fantasizes that this
could happen. It’s hard to say how I would respond. My book was edited by SCN friends and by my
siblings who did an advance read. My dear sister, Joan, is a former English
teacher who published her own book a few years ago. She read my final draft
three times to catch typos, punctuation errors, and tense mistakes. I printed with Morgan
Printing in Austin, TX (now called Ginny’s Printing) twice before, and
because I love and trust my contact person, Terry Sherrell, that’s what I’ve
done again. The marketing of my book will, of course, be up to me. I’m told
that that’s true when publishing with a small press as well.
SCJ: Can you
talk about your decision to publish an e-version via Amazon Kindle?
DVR: I like
reading e-books but felt an initial disappointment when I saw my own on my
Kindle. My paperbacks look and feel so much better. However, e-books are
inexpensive to publish, the market is extremely broad and the shelf life is
forever. I’m not very computer savvy, so I paid someone to do the conversion.
Then, since I’d ventured this far, I decided to pay for a website design. As
you may have guessed by this time, I didn’t publish under the assumption that
I’d make money, but based upon the experience of publishing my first two books,
I expect to at least break even with both my paperback and my Kindle edition.
SCJ: Initially your father and mother were reluctant to let
you go to college. Your mother was worried you’d lapse from your Catholic faith
and your father that you’d be tricked by communists into signing something
incriminating. You even had to forge your father’s signature on your
application!
DVR: It
wasn’t only my parents who didn’t encourage me. My teachers also never
suggested I go to college. I was a girl, and my intellectual capabilities
seemed mediocre at best. I was encouraged to become a secretary for the short
time period before I’d most likely get married and start having babies. My wacky personality didn’t help much. And my
dad was right about my gullibility; communists almost got me to sign something incriminating. It’s one of my
favorite stories in Head Over Heels.
Looking back I’m quite sure I had a learning disability of some kind, but no
one diagnosed those when I was a kid in the 1940s, nor did anyone offer special
help for kids struggling to learn. My self-esteem didn’t suffer that much since
I was nevertheless loved, treated equally, allowed freedom, and was cute. Back
then, cute counted for a whole lot more than now. Girls often wanted that label
more than the smart one, strange as it seems. I think I was motivated to try being a college
student because I thought this was where I’d have the most fun and meet the
right kind of guy to marry. I know how shallow this sounds in today’s world;
even then it was something girls were reluctant to admit. But that’s how I was
conditioned to think, having grown up in rural Wisconsin without much exposure to the rest of the world.
People back then joked about girls going to college to get their MRS degree,
but for many, including myself, it was true. While in college, I gradually woke
up to my own ambitions to achieve and become more than just an appendage to
“the man of my dreams.”
SCJ: You did
some pretty daring things in your college years: getting drunk at a frat house
full of horny pre-med males, touring Rome on the back of a motorbike with a policeman you’d
just met, traveling with an older German Baron and fending off his advances.
Were your father and mother’s objections to your going to college valid?
DVR: I’m
laughing! Daring things? Yes, I did a few,
but compare what I did to what young unmarried women are doing today! I think
my 1950-style wildness was helpful to my development. It provided the adventure
I craved, and it helped me discover what my values were through trial and error
rather than by just listening to adult authorities. I actually did my wild
things safely because I had boundaries, thanks to my family, community and
religion. In Head Over Heels, I
argued about the religious and societal rules that made no sense, but I rarely
broke them. In addition, I always knew that I had to be responsible for my
actions, and there was no rich daddy in my
life to pick up the pieces and pay for my mistakes. Growing up poor has this
advantage. My parents had reason to
worry about me leaving home and going to college. They saw my vulnerabilities,
and they knew I wasn’t a serious student. Their skepticism helped in that I was
determined to prove them wrong.
SCJ: In your
book you describe clothing in some detail. How does the clothing we wear define
us in our own and other’s eyes? How can clothing details enhance a memoir?
DVR: I use
clothing details to describe my characters’ personalities and their economic
status, to evoke the era and show how few belongings most college kids had in
the 50s compared to now. My favorite fashion statement belonging to the 1950’s
is the spiral-stitched Maidenform bras we wore to push our breasts out to a
peak, like the movie-star paper dolls we’d played with as kids. And the girdles
that even skinny girls wore to eliminate the jiggling. No wonder the flower
children of the 60s rebelled! How we look and what we wear contributes to our
persona just like how we smile or frown. When I went to college, everything I
owned fit into only three feet of hanging space, the shelf above it, and two
dresser drawers. Later I’ll admit I splurged on clothes a bit too often,
rationalizing that it was “artistic expression.” Now
that I’m an elder and living in Boulder, I shop less and am content to
have less, but I still think attire is an important way to show the identity
you wish to project to the world.
SCJ: What
are some other techniques you used to set the scene, reveal character, themes
etc.?
DVR: When I
read books, lengthy scene descriptions bother me, and
I keep wishing the author would just get to the point since I can create a
satisfactory picture of the setting from only a few well-chosen words. An exception is when a scene description shows
the era, like the one of my family’s kitchen. Otherwise I don’t see the point
of lengthy descriptions of, for instance, a scene in nature. This is my bias,
and other readers must love those long descriptions because they’re so often in
award-winning books. I think the point of the stories in my memoirs is more about
what people are saying and doing, not what the sky looked like. I used a lot of dialogue to show the
personalities of my characters because I think this is the best way to “show
not tell” the story, and because I love using words that belong to the era. I
love slang; it’s got pizzazz and it’s funny.
SCJ: Why do
you write memoir?
DVR: Life
review is a Jungian concept that I seem to do automatically, through refection
and more specifically through dream work. That’s in-depth and solitary work,
but since I was born with what’s called “the happy gene”, I felt compelled to
put this work to another use by writing happy books about the value of having
had a wholesome and ordinary upbringing. Returning to my roots through writing
memoir has helped me remember who I really am and take pride in knowing that my
life has been well lived. Reflecting on my childhood and young adult
experiences has also served as an escape. Today’s world is not an easy one to
comprehend or tolerate, especially as an elder. When I am experiencing sadness,
disappointment, or crisis within my family, I find relief in writing about a
time when everything was less complicated. It’s a better way to relax than
popping a pill, isn’t it?
For more information on the
author and her books visit Donna’s website: www.donnaremmert.com.
*This interview first appeared in the Story Circle Journal, Vol. 16, No. 3, September, 2012. It is used with permission. For more information or to subscribe visit www.storycircle.org.
