Death and Loss: Women Writing Out Loud

Conversations from the Archive

April 2015
BinderCon Los Angeles

Excerpts:

Emily Rapp Black: In nonfiction, grief is the richest experience you have. Everyone experiences it differently. I wrote my book when my son was still living. After he died, I literally was out of my mind. I was trying to find meaning, not feelings, before he died. After, all I had were feelings.

Nicole Belanger: I didn’t think I was allowed to be that messy. I waited to write about grief.

Niva Dorell Smith: I wrote down every memory I could immediately while I still remembered them vividly.

Mattea Kramer: It becomes a very different book than you set out to write. There’s a lot of truth to reveal that we don’t yet know until we write it down.

Claire Bidwell Smith: I wrote The Rules of Inheritance three times. I trashed the first two. The process took eight years. I kept asking myself, “Who cares?” But I kept writing it and kept sucking. Then I decided on a new take on the five stages of grief.

I came from an atheist/agnostic background. I expanded and suspended and transformed for After This. I’m nervous there will be people out there who will rip me to shreds.

Rapp Black: I wrote my second book in eight or nine months. I was in a fugue. I don’t want to repeat that. I was a little bit nut-balls. I was on planes writing on coffee cups and napkins.

Dorell Smith: I just finished a draft of my memoir. There’s a responsibility when we write about people who have passed away. Before my husband died, I asked him for his blessing to write about him. I wrote about him as a man, not just a sick person—before the eating away part. I was as honest as possible, without being gratuitous. I wanted to write something he would be proud of.

Belanger: My mom died in 2011, but I didn’t write the HuffPost piece until last year. I begrudgingly read a self-help book and started writing because I felt I had a debt to pay to help others.

Meditation has really helped me. I trust myself and what I remember.

Kramer: My dad died in 2003, and my grandma died in 2013. I started writing after Grandma’s death about both of them. I’m working on a book about both deaths set ten years apart.

Bidwell Smith: I was a writer before I had dead parents.

I remember [meeting] Dave Eggers and crying in my car after because he gave me a pen.

I was super fucking honest in that book. I encourage my patients to write letters to deceased loved ones.

Audience Member (to the panel): How do you deal with strangers who approach you?

Bidwell Smith: I have really good radar for the crazies. I have a wall that goes up. Otherwise, I’m okay with the familiarity of people who approach me.

Rapp Black: The person in the book is the truest me. I’m very protective of my privacy when people ask me rude questions.

“No” is a complete sentence.

I have been working on a novel half my life. I had the idea twenty years ago. I only figured out how to write the novel because of my experience with my son. The form broke open for me when my son was diagnosed. I really didn’t care what people thought of it.

Dorell Smith: Early on I wanted the loneliness. I didn’t want to be around people. My process was to write and cry, cry and write. Writing was part of the grieving process. Gradually, I got more comfortable interacting with people after sharing work publicly.

I still live the life of a writer all the time and am alone a lot.

Rebecca Soffer: Grief and loss are the IHOP endless pot of coffee.

Kramer (on writing): Don’t get bogged down in voice shame. My mentor said, “Courageously pursue your course in the darkness.”

Rapp Black: There aren’t rules. Don’t judge yourself. Take the nice gloves off. Take the cuffs off. [Tell yourself,] “I’m going to write the truth, even if you don’t like it.”

Bidwell Smith: Write because you don’t have a choice.

Kramer: Don’t worry about if there’s room in the market for your book. Go from a point of abundance. We need all the stories. Yours too will be a gift.

Dorell Smith: Write it for yourself.

Kramer: Write it raw. Absolutely, write it raw. On the thirty-fourth time, you’ll see, “Oh, here’s the place for humor.”

Rapp Black: There’s no ladder of loss. You don’t want the top spot. “I got the worst one!” It’s not a competition.

Bidwell Smith: There aren’t as many men writing about grief. We should include them. Don’t edge them out.

Kramer: This topic affects everyone.