The Yin and Yang of Love

I have been busy writing my book, so much so that I haven’t had a chance to post a blog. Until today. My book is not a sequel to my memoir, Becoming Alice. Rather it is what now is called creative nonfiction. I won’t belabor the point by going into a lengthy definition of that category, but instead I’ll tell you it is about a young woman who basically wants to get married. What woman doesn’t?

In the process of dating and the man and woman in my story have a lot of yin and yang between them. I thought you might like to know what that means. I went to my dictionary and here it is: “Yin and Yang (Chinese philosophy) are two principles, one negative, dark, and feminine (Yin) and one positive, bright, and masculine (Yang), whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things.”

I object! I have never heard yin-yang used in such a way. I have always thought of it as two forces that pull in different directions, perhaps like the positive and negative in electicity or the currect Republicans and Democrats in Congress. I just had to get that one in there. I personally used it in the back and forth dance couples often do when they first get to know one another. Or, what married couples often do for the rest of their lives.

Being a woman I STRONGLY OBJECT to the negative force being identified as feminine. And who says the positive force is always masculine.

I’ve got to do something to protest. I can throw my dictionaly away. Obviously it is way out of date. Or, I could give up on Chinese philosophy on which I have often relied. My favorite sayings are “He who hesitates is lost.” and “Patience is a virtue.” Perhaps it was Confucious who said that.

In any case I am right about people not always seeing things the same way. That is just part of the human condition, call it yin and yang or whatever you like.

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How To Be a Successful Speaker

Over the last three years I’ve learned a lot about speaking to an audience. I’ve spoken to as little as four people and as many as seventy-five people. My first gig was with a group of seventy-five. It was the one which happened shortly after my memoir, Becoming Alice, was published almost three years ago. And a large part of that audience was comprised of writers, readers, literary people of all sorts interested in all the arts including good books.

I had to overcome two problems. I’d not had much experience in public speaking; I’d only done it once before in San Francisco when I presented a very complicated case to Dr. Franz Alexander, who was then recognized as the father of psychosomatic medicine. My boss had gotten cold feet and simply turned to me and said, “I can’t do this. Here Alice,” she handed me the file, “you do it.”

I had no choice and got up in front of a packed auditorium of San Francisco’s elite medical community and simply spoke. I did have the advantage of being quite pretty then and Dr. Alexander was fascinated by either what I was saying, or maybe by me. In any case, he did not take his eyes off me and I did the same. Lesson learned: don’t speak to the hundreds of people out there. Focus on just one person and speak to him/her as if no one else is in the room. That lesson stood me in good stead when I presented Becoming Alice to the group of  seventy-five literary people.

Having never done a presentation as an author before, I decided to make some notes regarding what I would say when that sea of eyes turned in my direction.  I made some crib notes and took them with me to the event. Or, so I thought. When I got up to the podium and leafed through my book to find them, I realized that I had forgotten them at home. A shiver went through me. What was I going to do? It was like being thrown into the water without being able to swim.

“Okay,” I said to myself.  I picked up my book and after giving a very brief introduction, I started to read a few short excerpts from the book. I guess they must have liked those pages fairly well because we sold quite a good number of books that day.

I’ve done many more presentations and speaking gigs since then and have moved forward from that format. First, my knees don’t knock any more when I get up to the podium. And I don’t read from my book any more. I have discovered that people want only a very brief knowledge about the story. After all, they will want to be surprised by what happens as they read the book. People are far more interested if I talk about the meaning behind some of the specific occurances that happened. They like to hear more about the characters in the book and want to understand why they acted the way they did. They like to hear more backstory explaining circumstances and behaviors and feelings that I’d written about. It is the kind of approach, I believe, that awakens in the audience questions they have about similar experiences in their lives. And it prompts them to want to tell me about people they know and happenings that have have taken place in their lives. Furthermore, it makes for a very successful give and take in the question and answer period that follows any presentation.

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The Power of the Internet and Facebook

A couple of months ago I was stunned to learn about how powerful the internet can be. I received an email from an editor of Reed Magazine asking me if I would object to their writing a short bio about me as a former student and a short synopsis of Becoming Alice, since I was considered a Reedite. I couldn’t figure out how they could have known this. Apparently, they have spiders that search the internet for this kind of information and they had gone inside my memoir and learned that I had attended Reed. Inside my book! Unbelievable!

Of course I was delighted to have them post these short pieces in their magazine. I didn’t think I was a Reedite, since I wasn’t an alumni. That did not seem to matter to them. I eventually got a copy of Reed Magazine and was most pleased with their entries.

Fast forward a couple of months and another thing happened that stunned me a second time. I received an message in Facebook from the son of one of the people I wrote about in my book. He had read about Becoming Alice in Reed Magazine, bought the book, and wondered if one of the characters was his own father. Yes, he was! He then went on to find me on Facebook. We exchanged several communications that took us back to our earliest childhood experiences as refugees in Portland, Oregon. It was a wonderful reunion of two people who had so much in common.

Which brings me to the power of Facebook. I have been on that site for quite a long time and always thought it to be most useful to my kids and grand kids who use it not only to find old friends, but to share all their current social happenings and pictures with the their friends in one easy post. I did not have much use for that although I enjoyed seeing what was going on in their lives.

Then I get an email from Facebook telling me that three people had gone to visit my Page. My Page? I had not done one thing on my page about Becoming Alice since the day I created it. I thought it to be too forward to ask all my acquaintances to become my fans. Now that others are looking in on me on my Page, perhaps I better go over there and welcome them and perhaps let them know what is going on in my life. Apparently posting where I’ll be speaking this spring on the Appearnaces page of my website will not be enough. I better run right over to Facebook and tell those three people … and perhaps some others … what is happening in my life.

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About Skype

As soon as I learn one thing about using the internet, they throw another one at me. Now it is Skype. Can anyone help me understand how to use it?

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