The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #61: Ronit Plank
"Memoir is not payback. When you are writing memoir, or any genre, you already have the microphone so to speak, there’s no reason to punch down."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 61st installment, featuring , author most recently of When She Comes Back: A Memoir, and host of the podcast/newsletter. -Sari Botton
Ronit Plank’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The NYT, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, Salon, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won the Page Turner Award for Short Stories and the Eludia Award for Fiction. She’s Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, teaches and edits memoir, and hosts the podcast Let’s Talk Memoir. Find her on Substack, Instagram, Bluesky, and at ronitplank.com.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
Sari, first I want to thank you for all you do for writers and how you elevate memoir. Thank you for hosting me for this. (Editor’s note: 😭)
I feel like a lot of writers can say they knew they wanted to write from childhood on; that they dreamed of writing books someday. That wasn’t my experience. I’m in middle age and while I always enjoyed writing assignments during school, and my father has been a writer my whole life, I never saw myself as a capital-W “writer” until after both of my children were born.
Before I was a writer and teacher, I was an actor in NY and LA, and I ended up writing some theater pieces we performed at The Actor’s Gang in Los Angeles and for sketches I wrote in my Groundlings class. Those were my earliest experiences sharing my writing as an adult, but it wasn’t until around 2009, a few years after I moved to Seattle, when I started taking certificate programs in fiction and nonfiction through the University of Washington’s Continuum program that I became invested in being a published writer. My first essays and short stories got published around 2011 and I got my MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University in 2017.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Home is a Made-Up Place is my short story collection which came out in 2023 and When She Comes Back is my memoir which came out in 2021.
What number book is this for you?
My second.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
When She Comes Back is a memoir with a traditional mostly linear structure.
When I was getting my MFA at Pacific University I read dozens of memoirs as a requirement, but I hadn’t yet read lyric memoirs or even that many memoir-in-essays so I gravitated toward a traditional, chronological structure. At the time it was really all I knew. Now after reading hundreds more memoirs and interviewing memoirists for my podcast, I’ve learned a lot about many different structures and am experimenting with them myself. Every time I read a memoir with an organizing principle or approach that’s new to me, I am struck by how fluid and exciting this genre can be.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
When She Comes Back is about the loss of my mother to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the guru at the center of the Netflix documentary series, Wild Country, and our eventual reconciliation. A memoir about a family trying to find itself, grownups who don't know how to be adults, and what happens when the person your life revolves around can't stay, When She Comes Back is a story of resilience that Kirkus Reviews calls “intimate, intuitive,” and “emotionally vivid.”
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
The backstory of this book begins with me not wanting to write this book. When I enrolled in Pacific’s MFA program, it was for fiction. I’d been studying that genre for a few years and placing stories in literary magazines and while I’d also published essays around that time, I didn’t really understand or appreciate memoir. Compared to what I’d learned in fiction about plot and tension, nothing much seemed to happen in memoir and I had lots of misconceptions about the genre. I mistakenly believed memoir would set me on a course of self-pity and finger-pointing. I didn’t think my own story was important or interesting enough to share.
About a semester into my master’s program in fiction, I was having trouble finding material to write; I wasn’t as interested in creating protagonists and worlds out of thin air. Instead, I seemed to be writing and enjoying nonfiction a lot more. I switched my MFA genre to nonfiction and started working with my advisor, Debra Gwartney. It’s funny for me to think about it now but back then I had this idea that personal essays were more respectable than memoir, that memoir was “too easy,” so I was still trying to avoid it. When it was time to submit my first assignment to Debra I turned in a 20-page essay in which I attempted to encapsulate all the major events that shaped me without much depth or reflection. She strongly suggested that I “write the memoir already” and that’s when I began drafting what would become When She Comes Back.
When She Comes Back is about the loss of my mother to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the guru at the center of the Netflix documentary series, Wild Country, and our eventual reconciliation. A memoir about a family trying to find itself, grownups who don't know how to be adults, and what happens when the person your life revolves around can't stay…
I’ve tried to go back to fiction here and there but it doesn't draw me in the way memoir does. A novel isn’t out of the question someday, but I feel very nonfiction-y now; I prefer looking for stories and threads and connections from real life and turning them into something that means something new. I’ve recently taken some poetry classes and really enjoy that too.
For me the backstory of becoming a writer may have to do with first being an actor and a teacher, and someone who had hyper vigilance because of the insecure attachment I had growing up. Maybe I’m a writer because my father is a writer and my sister is a writer and it’s in our blood. Maybe I’m a writer because of what happened in my early childhood. Maybe it’s both. But if you had told me when I was in my 20s or early 30s that I would become a writer, I wouldn’t have believed you. Back then I wanted to be performing: a visible, loud, larger than life type of person on stage in front of you or in front of the camera. But I much prefer my life in front of a microphone recording interviews for the podcast, at my laptop writing, and teaching memoir classes. I’m happy with the balance I’ve been able to strike.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
One of the hardest aspects of writing this book was early- to mid-on when I was trying to figure out the narrative voice and how to effectively tell this story. I had been studying memoir for a while and reading heaps of them but was still having difficulty homing in on what the character voice and the narrator voice were and how they interacted. I think part of that is because memoir is generally demanding in this way, and also because I was less experienced with the genre. I’m hoping the next time I write lengthy memoir material this will be a bit easier for me to assimilate.
I’m grateful to the editors I got to work with, each of whom illuminated different aspects of the story that I needed to pay more attention to; we really do need trusted readers to help us shepherd our work. Publishing-wise I knew far less when I began submitting my manuscript to agents and presses than I do now. A friend of mine, author Jason Allen (The East End) generously offered to help me with my query letter back in 2018, after he’d gotten an agent and book deal. His letter helped me get requests for my full manuscript but the handful of agents who had expressed interest ultimately passed. When I saw how much attention Wild Wild Country (the docuseries about the guru my mother followed) was getting, I decided that I needed to get my book to a publisher soon. I realized that even if I got an agent, that agent would then have to sell the book and then that publisher would have to work with me on edits and formatting and it could be years before the book was in the world. I kind of felt like I had been pregnant with this story for a long time and wanted to give birth already.
When I met Diane Windsor of Motina Books, I knew I wanted to publish with her. We hit it off and she made me an offer. The first thing we did together was set a pub date for When She Comes Back and we then met on Zoom over the course of the year prior to that pub date to discuss everything from font and formatting to marketing. My publishing experience with this independent, woman-owned press has been great and Motina Books also published Home is a Made-Up Place.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
As far as changing identifying details and names, it’s a very personal decision for each of us. I interviewed some memoirists about how they handled this for an article I wrote a few years back for Writer’s Digest which you can read here. I personally try not to publish anything that I wouldn’t want to admit to writing or be able claim without apologizing. What we put into the world is so easily findable these days that trying to keep anything secret is nearly impossible anyway. I think it’s important to have integrity with our words and our work and if you’re writing with complexity and self-reflection and have trusted readers to check in with, you’ll rest easier.
In When She Comes Back and almost all of my essays I change the names of the people I write about to protect their privacy. I want the story to be what matters, not the identities of the people in my life who didn’t ask to be dragged into my narrative. Even in my memoir when I wrote about a beloved teacher, I used a different name because the scenes with her are there to help illustrate the story I was trying to tell, not to shine a light specifically on her.
Before my book went to press, I did send the manuscript to my closest family. I only got notes – lengthy notes – from one of my relatives who corrected parts of my vocabulary in Hebrew and questioned some of what I had written, doubting my accuracy and intent. They were worried about what people in their community and their loved ones would think of them. I understood where they were coming from, but I believe I had been even-handed in the manuscript. I try to be careful about this in my work. In every class I teach underscore the importance of being nuanced and generous in our depiction of those we write about. Memoir is not payback. When you are writing memoir, or any genre, you already have the microphone so to speak, there’s no reason to punch down.
After talking with my loved one, I did end up changing one section very slightly. In it, I am in grade school and my hand-me-down clothing doesn’t fit well around my bigger stomach. In the scene I am distressed because I am uncomfortable and feel badly about myself. The family member I had this long conversation with before my book went to press worried in reading this scene people would assume they hadn’t cared enough about me to get me clothes that fit. It was not my intention to blame this relative at all. They didn’t know the clothes were tight on me because I was too ashamed to admit that to them when I was in elementary school. But I understood their point and so I revised the scene and added a few words about how I hadn’t told them that my clothes were too tight. I wanted to be sure readers didn’t misconstrue what I hoped to show with that scene, which was not that I wasn’t cared for, but that I didn’t feel good in my skin; I didn’t feel worthy.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I’m a big fan of Miriam Toews whose novels All My Puny Sorrows and Women Talking I deeply admire. Her work resonates with me emotionally and I appreciate the way she calibrates the tension in these stories. Back when I was revising When She Comes Back and was trying to hone the two voices I needed for narrator-I and character-I, I looked to titles that are a bit older now. I studied This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, Stop-Time by Frank Conroy, Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox, Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, and The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr.
When I saw how much attention Wild Wild Country (the docuseries about the guru my mother followed) was getting, I decided that I needed to get my book to a publisher soon. I realized that even if I got an agent, that agent would then have to sell the book and then that publisher would have to work with me on edits and formatting and it could be years before the book was in the world. I kind of felt like I had been pregnant with this story for a long time and wanted to give birth already.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Keep writing and don’t worry about not knowing what shape your manuscript is taking or whether people will read it. Your job as a writer, as my guest author Steve Almond (Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow) said on my podcast, is “to outlast your own doubt.” You don’t have to engage in conversations with yourself about whether the world needs your story or whether there are too many memoirs or whether anyone cares about what happened to you. The first draft is to learn about what it is you want to say. Revisions are for finding out why the story matters and what is still unsolved in you.
Second guessing ourselves comes with creative territory but try not to get hung up whether or not what you’re doing has resonance or heft. You really just need to go bit by bit, step-by-step, one word in front of the next and accumulate pages so that you have something to work with. You won’t have any manuscript, nothing that can be published if you don’t put the words in. Write what you need to write and then in your next revision, you will start to tease out the meaning. It’s from an abundance of material that we pull out the kernels we ultimately keep. Allow yourself to become expansive and curious so that you can unearth parts of your story that you might not realize or recognize otherwise; allow yourself to make a mess. After you’ve revised your manuscript a few times and learned more about your material it’s a good time to have trusted readers or editors take a look at your project.
The other thing I’ve learned is that when your book is ready, you will get it into the world if you really want to. There are many ways to publish a book, and you can find the right way for you. Yes, we want our books to be good and resonate with our readers, we want to be proud of our work and have others appreciate it, but none of that is possible if you don’t do the work of writing, which is solitary and often difficult, but if you feel called to a writing life, embrace it.
What do you love about writing?
I love lots of parts of writing, among them how we are literally creating something from where there might have been nothing. I love how a passing thought or an impulse becomes a hunch we explore and how in doing so we uncover something we didn’t even know we wanted to express. When readers then receive our work and understand or recognize what we are trying to do, it’s one of the best feelings. I also love that in order to write all I need to write is paper or laptop and some time by myself. And I never know what I will find when I allow myself to wander and explore. Each of us are inherently full of so many raw materials: subjects, ideas, feelings, memories, impulses, wishes, unresolved moments and questions... It’s an adventure to root around and recognize how what we’ve experienced has impacted us and who we are because of that.
What frustrates you about writing?
How we’re never really done and we have to keep pushing ourselves to create and produce work we are satisfied with and proud of. Figuring out our last essay or poem or story doesn’t mean when we sit down to write the next one it will be easy. We have to start from scratch, dig in, and go meaning-making all over again.
What about writing surprises you?
The ways we discover what we think and feel in the act of creating. Also, how much I can learn simply from reading other writers whom I admire. Even if I only have thirty minutes to read or write on a given day, that can be enough to help me figure out something in my own writing or give me an idea about what I’d like to try.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times?
With my different editing, teaching, and podcasting hats I do have to find a way to preserve my creative writing time. While I don’t have a set-in-stone routine I try to write for myself first thing in the morning. That seems to be when I’m the most productive and focused for that kind of work. It’s also my way of being sure I prioritize it when I need to.
The other writing I do like craft articles or developmental letters for clients, editing work for The Citron Review, and interviews and show notes for podcast episodes I can do any time of day or evening because that work is more analytical and result oriented. I’m kind of a worker bee so those tasks are about time spent and attention, whereas for creative and generative work I need quiet, space and privacy to explore.
When it was time to submit my first assignment to Debra [Gwartney] I turned in a 20-page essay in which I attempted to encapsulate all the major events that shaped me without much depth or reflection. She strongly suggested that I “write the memoir already” and that’s when I began drafting what would become When She Comes Back.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
My other pursuits are more about peace of mind and making sure I don’t spend my entire day seated and writing because as author Suzanne Roberts (Animal Bodies) shared on my podcast, writing is very hard on the body. We have lots of dogs and I take breaks to check in and cuddle with them when I can. Connecting with them seems to get me back into the present and help ground me. I try to do some type of exercise whether it’s yoga or cardio or weights, I try to get together with friends once or twice a week for coffee or a meal, and I grab whatever time I can with my busy teenagers. I love to watch movies and TV at night with my husband and lose myself in characters and plot over tea and snacks.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I’ve been developing a 10-week course in memoir for the University of Washington’s Continuum Program and will be teaching that virtually beginning this March. In fact, registration is about to begin or is open now. My agent has my current project which is a book about strengthening plot and resonance in memoir on submission right now. I probably have another memoir in me, but I haven’t started that yet because I know how demanding it will be to undertake and right now my focus is on Let’s Talk Memoir production, editing, and teaching. But I’m writing shorter nonfiction pieces which gives me an opportunity to explore and experiment with structure and voice and that is very satisfying.
Thanks for sharing this questionnaire. I like what Ronit has to say about so many aspects of writing, including (maybe especially) how it takes perseverance. She is a generous presence in the literary world, and I appreciate that, too!
Thanks for this, Sari. It helps a lot.