LE: Congratulations Diane! SDMWA is excited to announce you as our December 2021 Member of the Month! Please tell us how you discovered SDMWA.
DS: Lannette Bloom invited me to a SDMWA meeting in December 2017. In the process of writing her memoir, Memories and Dragonflies: Simple Lessons for Mindful Dying, she had become part of the community. I felt an immediate pull into the group and genre but didn’t have the tools. The following month, I plunged into Marni and Tracy’s Certificate in Memoir Writing courses.
LE: Diane, have you always been a writer?
DS: As a physician, my writing focused on science-based research for medical journals and books. My first foray into something different produced a consumer health book, The Complete Book of Bone Health (Prometheus Books, 2011).
LE: What impacts do you think writing classes have made on your writing?
DS: Memoir writing was totally out of my wheelhouse. The year-long course in memoir writing followed by read and critique sessions enabled me to learn the genre. And the learning continues with every revision and also reading of others’ writing.
LE: We’d love to hear about what you are presently writing.
DS: My memoir, Lives on Brown Cards, continues as a work in progress in its gazillionth revision or so it seems. It’s a coming-of age-memoir about a newly minted physician at an urban Southern hospital and the unforgettable experiences that helped her see beyond the diagnostic data of her many patients and recognize instead their essential humanity and lives. But she learns even more when she ends up on the other side of the stethoscope as a patient herself.
LE: You were a winner in the 2019 Memoir Showcase (Congratulations!) Please tell us a little bit about how you chose your scene and what it was like to win a spot in the Showcase.
DS: The Theme of “I Didn’t See That One Coming” immediately brought to mind the story depicted in “Killer Bees” about the unexpected loss of a young patient and her family’s surprising response to her death. Winning, of course, is always fun. The whole experience from working with an editor and a professional actor to seeing my story unfold on stage was an incredible thrill and honor to be part of the Memoir Showcase and now in print as part of the third edition of Shaking the Tree. TRULY AMAZING! Here’s where you can get your copy: https://amzn.to/3EijCHF
LE: What are some of your favorite Memoirs? Your favorite Authors?
Too numerous to cite. I like to read earlier successful memoirist to learn the art like Mary McCarthy. I’m reading right now Kat Chow’s Seeing Ghosts, a haunting memoir about the loss of her mother and how it shapes her living.
LE: Any advice for new writers?
DS: Everyone has a story to tell, everyone is a writer.
Take the plunge.
Find your community.
Take a class–San Diego Ink and beyond have wonderful resources for classes.
Join or form a like-minded group for read and critique.
LE: Great advice! Diane, tell us how we can reach you. Website? Social channels?
DS: I am an abysmal social channel creature. But search for Dr. Diane Schneider on any platform and you’ll find me.
Check out drdianeschneider.com
Thanks to you, Laura, and all the hard-working board members of SDMWA to foster memoir writers in our community.
LE: It is our pleasure, and we are honored to write alongside of you at SDMWA. Thank you for being such an outstanding member of our writing community Diane!