This week, Ernestine Bradley of Verona, a former professor at Montclair State University and wife of Bill Bradley, spoke at the Ringwood Library. Bradley described writing as a means of dealing with such painful segments of her past as growing up in Nazi Germany and suffering from breast cancer. Writing allowed her to find a ”much more consistent way,” of thinking about the past. Bradley has also said that she believes “the world always needs some interpretation, otherwise we face it blindly. Without a structure, you can’t process whatever information there is.”
“The Way Home, A German Childhood, an American Life” was released in paperback in March.
The popular memoir class at Adult School of Montclair is already full, but you could consider, Untying the Writing Knot — billed as a “productive and supportive workshop.” There’s also The Write Group which has been meeting at the library for seven years:
We’ve kept faith with our original concept and built upon it: we now meet every Tuesday from 10-11 for our support group, every Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and from 7-9 p.m. for our critique workshops and every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to 12 noon for our free-write workshop. Our monthly Open Mic readings provided a showcase for new and talented local writers and give them an opportunity to meet us and each other.
You can’t swing an aluminum bat in this town without hitting a writer, so we know there are a host of other groups, classes and whatnot sitting in Starbucks with their razorpoints and notebooks.
(Tell us who helped you.)
I’ve made a living as a TV writer since 1989. But TV is so collaborative that I’ve never wanted to join a writers’ group or workshop – every day is constant feedback and revision, so i prefer to keep my personal writing feedback-free.
But to answer the question of who helped me: I was lucky that the first person who hired me to write was the late Chris Kreski at MTV. I loved his style and attitude, and he’s my model still. You just do the work, enjoy the process and don’t sweat it. Make it tight, make it funny, make it home at a reasonable hour. I completely owe Kreski my career and I miss him every day.
Diedre: You’ve been reading the posts on Baristanet. Do you really thinks it’s a good idea for many of these people to start firing their shrinks?
Good point Fred. These people should just check themselves in.
Hey, I bailed on my first and only shrink a month ago after about a year of therapy(she REALLY didn’t take it well), and i have a question for all y’all therapy veterans — Is it standard shrink procedure to say that quitting will undo all the work, and that quitting is proof that I need to continue, and all kinds of circular logic like that? Is therapist training mostly about learning to bully people into staying in therapy?
Sleepyseek — no. And it sounds like that controlling therapist from Seinfeld…
–it is the test of a good therapist. The problem of course is that maybe it is true. And maybe it is that the therapist loves you too much to let you go.
I had a great experience with my first therapist, working through the grieving process of losing a parent.
When I moved to NYC, I decided to continue. That did not go well at all. In the first session I discussed the reasons for my previous therapy. During that session, the therapist answered the phone while I was talking, and proceeded to take a call from another patient.
Then, during the second session, I was talking about my Dad, and she said, “You’re always talking about your father in the past tense — what has he been up to lately?” She had forgotten that I’d told her he died. When I reminded her, she looked mortified. Needless to say, I never went back.
My sister’s therapist suddenly stopped returning phone calls and being there at appointment time. Turned out she had died.
A good therapist is like a good pair of shoes: You may have to try a few on before you find the right fit.
I, too, went to a therapist after I lost my mom. Turns out I had other issues (what a surprise!) and stayed on.
That being said, I went through a couple of other theapists before I met this wonderful woman. They were just not the right fit.
Anyhoo, I am done with therapy for now but it’s nice to know that she’s there for me should I need to go back.
Thanks all – it’s very helpful to get a broader POV on this. And thanks Liz for my first ever response post from a barista. Yes, I was immediately reminded of the Seinfeld thing. Maybe I should send Kramer in to do some reconnaisance.
My brother-in-law is a therapist who after decades in the practice believes that most people who go to therapists are just narcissists who want someone to focus on them.
Doesn’t everybody? We all crave attention, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re narcissists
Some of us crave attention, others pay for it. Blogging costs far less per hour, and in my case it satisfies an addiction to writing while allow me to test message strategies to see what sort of reactions are triggered.
It IS paying someone to focus on you, but what’s wrong with that? I pay my allergist to focus on me too – just for a different set of problems. Like i said, i’ve done only a year of therapy with one shrink, and i’ve chosen to stop. But I see it like this: Unless you’re really mentally ill, therapy = paying someone to listen attentively and respond as you talk about your fears, frustrations and fantasies. It’s an indulgence, and I like to indulge myself sometimes. Besides, it’d be rude to talk to a friend for an hour non-stop about yourself awithout ever once saying “and how are you doing?”
It is nice to subject people to one’s problems and not have to worry about boring them. It is nice to hear how you describe your life and get a perspective upon it that might not be gained otherwise. Everyone passes through a stage of primary narcissism and many of us regress at times. Others never progress. A true narcissist, according to the good Dr. Freud, has very little hope because he/she cannot ever connect to anything beyond the self. It’s pretty rare to be that far gone. Therapy cannot help the narcissist because there can be no identification with the therapist, no transference, nothing but self self self.
Go, Ernestine!
I am thrilled to see this. I will be picking up a copy promptly!
I have been a fan of yours and your husband’s for years. I had you in the late 80’s for Practice in Spoken German at MSC. You helped me realize my need to take extra measures to get the practice I truly needed. As soon as finals were over, I was on a plane to Frankfurt, and lived with a family for 3 months to get the full experience of German, not just walking into a classroom.
Your work as a professor was invaluable to my learning much more than a language!
Thank You!