Ep 097 -- A Stroke in her 20s became a stroke of luck for Maddi Niebanck

I’m typing this on January 1, but whenever you read this, it is the first day of the next year of your life, and that’s a great time to start sharing your story.

As a stroke survivor, survivor of some other acute or chronic trauma, care giver, professional, or just someone who has lived some life, you have a story to tell. You have experiences to share. You’ve worked through some emotional stuff. Or you haven’ worked through it, but it’s sill there.

And maybe you’ve thought about writing a memoir.

Christine H. Lee joined us last year to talk about her memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember. She is an author, teacher, and stroke survivor. Today, she’s back to help you start writing your own memoir.

• An autobiography is about a person. A memoir is about a person’s experience.
• Understand the roles of author, character, and narrator.
• There is universality in the particular.
• The Oxford Comma is awesome.
• Get a cohort.
• We are about more than stroke.
• Keep writing.

Christine H. Lee is the author of a memoir (TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU DON’T REMEMBER), which was featured in Self magazine, Time, The New York Times, and NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Guernica, The Rumpus, The New York Times, and BuzzFeed, among other publications. She also has an urban farm–you can read about her farm exploits at Backyard Politics. Her novel is forthcoming from Ecco / Harper Collins.

Born in New York City, Christine earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and her MFA at Mills College. She has been awarded a residency at Hedgebrook, and her pieces have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and placed in competitions such as the Poets and Writers’ Magazine Writers Exchange Contest, Glimmer Train Fiction Open, and others. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College of California’s MFA program and an Editor at The Rumpus.

If you would like to order a signed copy of TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU DON’T REMEMBER, you may order it from East Bay Booksellers and specify in the notes section that you would like a signed copy (or two or three) and any customization (if it should be addressed to a particular person). They will then fulfill it with signature. And you would be supporting a local bookstore, which warms Christine’s heart.

Consider these two sentences:

1. At the support group, we learned about the main causes of stroke, kittens, and Barb’s muffins.
2. At the support group, we learned about the main causes of stroke, kittens and Barb’s muffins.

The first sentence says that we learned about 3 things:

• The main causes of stroke
• Kittens
• Barb’s muffins

The second sentence says that we learned about the main causes of stroke. Those causes are:

• Kittens
• Barb’s muffins

The words are the same. The difference is that comma after kittens. That comma is called the Oxford Comma, and it’s somewhat controversial.

Many folks feel you should only use it if it clarifies the sentence. Otherwise you should leave it out.

I’m of the school of thought that we should always use it when writing a sentence with three or more things in a list like that.

There have even been lawsuits where the decision came down to whether the comma was in the written law or not.

Here is the Wikipedia article with more informati...