309. Pace and Don't Race Your Story with Lola Reid Allin

Author and pilot Lola Reid Allin discusses writing the story of your life, how to and not to structure it, and the importance of pacing your novel.

*Content Warning: Mentions of previous domestic violence.
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Check out Lola's website:
https://www.lolareidallin.com/ 

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https://www.facebook.com/LolaReidAllin/
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https://www.instagram.com/lola.reid.allin/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Getting the pacing right helps keeps readers engaged. But how do you set the pacing while telling your life story? After all, you can't make up a more exciting event or cut something that may be drawn out or take place over multiple but is necessary when it comes to bringing everything together. Lola Reid Allin, author of Highway to the Sky, is here to share her insights into this topic and how she did it with her own book.

Jennia: Thank you so much for being here, Lola.

Lola Reid Allin: Jennia, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I'm thrilled to be here!

Jennia: I'm thrilled to have you.

Lola Reid Allin: Thanks!

Jennia: Could you tell listeners a little bit about your book and what it covers? Because I know that you go beyond just your personal life and you also touch on some broader issues.

Lola Reid Allin: So Highway to the Sky: An Aviator's Journey sounds like it's just going to be—or perhaps it sounds like it's just going to be about aviation. And even though aviation is fantastic and it's one of the loves of my life, that would be kind of a boring book. Maybe it would be more like a primer for learning to fly, which is in fact what my book started out—

Jennia: Oh, really?

Lola Reid Allin: —even though I was writing memoir. The first—Well, it didn't start out intentionally that way. But one of my developmental editors said, after she read probably the 40th draft (both laugh). The third or fourth I-want-to-submit-this-to-somebody-and-have-them-read-it draft. She said, "Lola, you're not writing about aviation, you're writing about women's issues. Aviation is that vehicle that's driving the momentum of your story forward." And so in that context, I talk about my early wishes to become a pilot. But the majority of the book covers the adult time in my life when I was learning to fly and then when I became a female commercial that is a commercial pilot. And that was in the late 70s, 80s, and 90s and the special challenges that women had and still have today in non-traditional careers—

Jennia: Mmm.

Lola Reid Allin: —that are traditionally dominated by men. So in the 70s and 80s, about four percent of commercial pilots were female. Now another 96 were male. It's a little bit better today, about six to seven percent of female—

Jennia: That's it?! (laughs in disbelief)

Lola Reid Allin: Yeah! So it's a little better. About six to seven percent of commercial pilots are female. With of course say 93, 94 are male. So that was one of the issues. And talking about ; so even then my book read, so I was told by my editor (both laugh), she said, "Well, the first half is kind of all about aviation and you getting to be a pilot. And it talks about your life with your husband and your child," and how I decided that I couldn't live with this particular man. Even though he was a wonderful human being, he was a good provider, he was an excellent father. We had a great house, we owned an airplane, we had a couple cars. Everything sounds wonderful. But he was an alcoholic who wouldn't admit it, and he had a bad temper.

Jennia: Mmm.

Lola Reid Allin: So even though yes, he was abusive and I suffered domestic violence, it was  . . . He was a bully. You know, at six-foot-two and very athletic—he was an athlete when I met him—he could be very intimidating—

Jennia: Right.

Lola Reid Allin: —just as a physical presence. So the book talks about domestic violence and how one of the reasons I wanted to leave was for the sake of our son, because our son is going to internalize violence as an acceptable behavior. Whether that's violence towards women, violence towards animals. You can internalize violence and it becomes an accepted behavior that, well, doesn't everybody treat your wife this way or treat your husband this way? Anyway, and then the second half was all about flying and no personal information at all. So it was sort of like two books in one—

Jennia: Right, yeah.

Lola Reid Allin: —that didn't have any real connecting. So there were some real pacing issues, for sure.

Jennia: Yeah, you said you started the book in your childhood and then later moved on. So did you always start the book there? And then how did you figure out where to start it within your life?

Lola Reid Allin: Ahh, again, it was the editor, the developmental editor, Sarah Chauncey said, "Lola, you're writing about women's issues." So the original chapter that I began with, it's still in the book. I think it's now chapter 22, maybe. And it talked about an incident in an aircraft where I was doing a pilot examination and I passed out. I absolutely blacked out. And I had asked this student—who was ready for his private pilot flight test, in other words, very accomplished. I said to him, "Okay, so I want you to enter the spin and hold the spin until I ask you to recover." Pilot would not normally do that. If they even accidentally got into a spin, they'd recover right away. So I'd given this guy specific instructions to hold the spin. Well, anyway, so when I woke up from the blackout—

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: —we were spinning quite nicely towards the ground. so I went "Woahh!" I didn't say anything, but inside I'm thinking, So I said, "Recover!" Anyway—and if he reads this book, he'll now know why we held the spin so long that at the time he was like, "It was so exciting! You know, I never thought a girl would like, you know, [to] spin so much!" It was like, "Yeah, whatever." And I don't think that would have been fatal because number one, I would never set those parameters for an inexperienced student.

Jennia: Ohh.

Lola Reid Allin: But still, I mean, he would have recovered. He wouldn't have said, "Oh, Lola said not to recover, so I better just hold this and we're going to smash into the ground." That would never have happened.

Jennia: No.

Lola Reid Allin: Right? I mean, self-preservation would ensure that. The end result was something very simple. It was a medical issue, but it was a transient medical issue.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: And Sarah said, "That's really interesting. But the resolution is . . . it's interesting and we're glad to know what it is, but it's not so exciting." She said, "But because you're writing about women's issues, you need to start the chapter—start the book with what is now chapter 11," or so. So I kind of flip flopped them. Chapter 11 is where the book actually starts and it's with one of my students. And then it jumps to a couple chapters, one chapter of my early life and then moves right into my adult life. So the first chapter talks about a female student who's age 56. She's had three male instructors and they can't get her to land the airplane properly. She's a wonderful student, but we also found out this is a physical condition as well—or a physical situation. I figured it out and we all—and myself included, but certainly the first three instructors who were all male—approached her with the a priori attitude, unconsciously, I'm sure—

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: —of, what the heck? Why is a 56-year-old woman taking flying lessons? And, in fact, the chief instructor says to me, "I don't get it, why does she want to fly? She's got a husband, a beautiful house, four adult children. Why does she want to learn to fly?" And my response to the chief flying instructor was, "Well, I don't know why she wants to fly, but would you actually ask that of a man who was 56 years old?" And of course you wouldn't. I mean, typically people who are slightly younger are more typical flight students, but not necessarily. You can learn to fly at any age. So it was enlightening to say the least. And so she said—and also that same student, Joy, appears later on, near the very end of the book. And so she said, "You need to—again with pacing, if you don't introduce Joy until near the very end, it won't bookend the same way. But it—also, the readers won't be as vested in that particular character." So she gave me some excellent advice.

Jennia: Yeah, I was going to ask how you brought in some of those societal or even professional expectations at the time, which feel like they've extended into now based on that statistic about female commercial pilots. But, yeah, it sounds like you used actual, real examples and then dialogue too.

Lola Reid Allin: I did. I did. I have a really good memory for situations and dialogue, for ordinary conversations. But there were some epic encounters and conversations that I had with fellow pilots—

Jennia: Ahh.

Lola Reid Allin: —and of course, all of them were male at that time, but also with passengers. And they could be very simple. But for example, there's one fellow who, very well dressed. He's just flown into a northern airport. He's flown from Toronto, though, on a Boeing 737. And he's carrying a briefcase. He looks very urbane, he's well spoken. We're chatting on the ramp, and he says to me, even though I'm on a ramp, which suggests that I'm doing something involved in aviation, but I'm also wearing my uniform with stripes. And he says along the lines of, "Hey it's great to see that your company has finally hired stewardesses." But the issue was, of course, that he thought I was the stewardess.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: And I said, "Oh, no, actually, I am going to be on your flight, but I'm one of the pilots." And then I started to say, you know, "These stripes on my arm indicate that I am a pilot." He said, "I know that. Didn't you hear me just say that I fly all the time and I'm so thrilled that you're here to serve us food?" And I went, no, "No, no. This is my jacket and I'm the pilot." And he said, "Well, didn't you just borrow the jacket?" So (laughs) bizarre things that if you saw a man wearing a pilot uniform, you wouldn't assume that he was going to serve your food and that he borrowed the jacket.

Jennia: Right.

Lola Reid Allin: So there are these assumptions, and they don't just pop up at age 40 or something. They're ingrained in our society that we have had and still have these expectations. Some of them are changing more and more. Parents are encouraging their children, boys and girls, into non-traditional careers to be what they want to be. Whereas my father, when I suggested I wanted to be a pilot, he said, "Don't be silly. Girls don't fly airplanes." And he said that to me when we were on a flight going out west in 1962 and we were going from to Toronto to Regina. And I thought it was such a fun ride and he just was very dismissive. Mom also cautioned me, but for a different reason. She herself, I think by this time, was feeling quite defeated. She'd had to quit her job when she got married in 1947. Yeah, there were a lot of little incidents like that that I—I kept a bit of a notebook, but nothing really serious. The book I'm working on now is about the Maya of Mesoamerica—

Jennia: Mmm.

Lola Reid Allin: —and the time I spent with the Maya living in their homes. But I took extensive journal notes. And I'm not copying exactly. That would be probably kind of boring, except in a few instances. So I'll read a few pages and then think, "Nah, that's not going to work in this at all. It won't be really readable." So then I'll read a few more pages and think, "Yeah, that works really well." And I've got a couple writer pals and we Zoom about once a month, but we submit monthly as well and we critique each other's work. And they're both pilots, which is super helpful. But the attitudes that I found very frustrating are still pervasive. There are private Facebook groups where it's invitation only, or you can sign up and say, "Okay, I'm a pilot and this is my experience and I want to join."

Jennia: Oh right.

Lola Reid Allin: So you have to be vetted in some way, either recommended or personal information submitted. And a lot of the complaints are so similar. I'm shocked. Now, there are some changes. There are more women flying. Percentage is only slightly better.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: But the fact that there are more women flying means that unlike me, when I—through all my training, it wasn't until my commercial flight test that I encountered a female flight instructor. There were no other female students. Whereas now if you go to a flight school, it's highly probable there would be at least one other and probably more than one female flight student. Couple of flight instructors would be female. So there are now women that you can reach out to who of course have other connections. So there's a much bigger network. Which you can now just post online or post your feelings or reach out to friends instantly. And so when I was working in Northern Canada, yes, there were support networks—

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: —but if you're up in Northern Canada and telephone calls were expensive, we didn't have cell phones to, you know, PM somebody or send a text. It just wasn't happening. So yes, you could write a letter and yes, you could get support, but it wasn't the same kind of immediacy. And what else—what could they do too? And it was fairly lonely because there weren't many people that I could speak with. Obviously, I had more than a couple supporters who were male, obviously, but no females with whom I could have a conversation.

Jennia: So it does sound like there was a lot of internal conflict that shows up in the memoir too. So what were some of the techniques that you used to keep that feeling like it was constantly moving forward and it wasn't, for instance, "I'm going to ruminate for 10 pages on this relationship or how I feel about the way that my coworkers are treating me"?

Lola Reid Allin: Yeah, I don't think I have anything quite that lengthy at all (Jennia laughs). That would get kind of boring because that's one thing you have to be concerned of. Yes, the memoir is about me, obviously. But it's really not about me. I wrote it. It is about me. It's about my experiences. But as more experienced professionals have informed me, it's about me, it's what I learned, how I experienced it, or what I took away from the experience, and how I can explain that in a readable way that the reader will take away valuable information. And that is difficult. I found it particularly difficult to reveal emotions. So there's not a lot of ruminating. That was the most difficult thing for me in the sense of—And let's say someone just insulted you, and I (Jennia laughs) would have no response.

Jennia: Right.

Lola Reid Allin: Or I might have a response, a verbal response, but I wouldn't write down how I was feeling. So students and a couple profs would say, "Well, how are you feeling?" It was like, "What do you mean, 'how am I feeling?' Think! How I'm feeling. Do I need to tell you that?" (Jennia laughs). Well, yes, you do need to mention at least a little bit. So in some cases—I never did the poor me thing, but I'd say, "Gee, you know, I wonder why they said that?" I never took anything personally in the sense of I tried to make it a broader sketch of what it was like to be a woman.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: In, let's just say from 19, well, 1975 onward, a married woman—and how you were expected to behave and what was expected of you. And when I didn't or wouldn't or couldn't fulfill that obligation of being a dutiful wife who, you know, obeys her husband, my husband had a predictable reaction. He was angry. But I tried to look at that at the bigger picture. He'd been brought up that way. His father treated his mother that way. Even the guys I worked with. There's one instance where I'm going flying. We're on a charter and walking towards the airplane through the hangar, and the pilot in question I had a crush on. He was just very sweet and very nice. Just this big cuddly teddy bear.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: And we get to the passenger door that lets us out of the hangar—it's a huge World War II hangar—out of the passenger door and onto the ramp where the airplane is. And he stops. He puts his hand on the doorknob and he stops, and he turns to me and he says, "You know, the problem with you  . . ." And I thought, "What? The problem with me? What do you mean me?" And he said, "I need to ask you something." I was like, "What?" And I'm thinking, "Oo, is he gonna ask me out? Boy, that's pretty weird. That's a strange approach." But then he says, "We don't know how to treat you. Should we treat you like we treat our wives and mothers?—"

Jennia: Ohh.

Lola Reid Allin: Or our "girlfriends" in his case? "—And in which case we'd open the door and let you walk through first because that's what men are trained to do for women. Or should I just open the door and walk through and you can follow me?" (Jennia laughs). I said, "Well, I think the latter." I said, "Because we're colleagues, we're, you know, sort of basically the same age mates." It wasn't like he was much younger and I was older or that vice versa. I said, "If I was carrying a bunch of stuff, if I was carrying baggage for the flight and you had your hands free, yeah, I think it would be kind of nice for you to open the door." (both laugh). And that is meant to reveal how maybe men and women—I suppose women do it too. But in this case, how men judge a female pilot as capable or incapable. And with reference to the women in their own lives. So for example, if their mothers had a private license or a commercial license. Not necessarily flying commercially—

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: —but let's say their mothers were pilots. They're going to look at women differently. Or if they know a female pilot. But for the most part, all of the guys I ever worked with, their mothers, their sisters, their wives, their girlfriends, grandmothers, they didn't fly airplanes. In many cases, some of them didn't even drive a car. So that's what I mean when I say that we need to change the way we raise little boys and little girls with expectations based on what that child wants, not what you think your daughter wants or should act. You know, we need to ditch that double standard of expectations, of behaviors. And so that one example—and there are others as well—but I thought was quite revealing.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: And the other thing is in non-traditional or STEM careers, men probably have that imposter syndrome for a little bit. But when they start a new job, that is to say, they'd have an imposter syndrome or feeling when they start a job. But it quickly disappears because their colleagues don't look at them and say, "I wonder how you got here?" You know, "Did you sleep your way to the top?"

Jennia: Right.

Lola Reid Allin: They just assume that they're qualified. And yet a woman who is judged differently, that's what, you know, they wonder. How did she get the job? And yet we do the same testing, at least in aviation, the same test, the same exams, the same flight test by inspectors as any of the guys. And yet we're still judged constantly. And any mistake is racked up as not, "Oh, she had a bad flight," but, "Oh, she's not really capable of flying. And she just proved it."

Jennia: Mhm. Going back to pacing, you had said that some of your chapters are no longer in the original spots. So were those changes made in order to improve pacing? And do you have any tips that you can share based on that experience?

Lola Reid Allin: Yes, the answer to your question is absolutely yes, they were moved to improve pacing. Generally, it flowed quite nicely once I got that recommendation from Sarah about which to move and why.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: The only other thing I would have done—and I thought about it sort of at the 11th hour—was to do a braided essay, sort of a braided memoir with flashback chapters to my childhood. But ultimately, I think it flows better this way because a memoir should really focus on one time period in your life. But I chose to sort of stretch that a little bit and make it a facet of my life, that is, in being interested in aviation, even as a young girl, and how I ultimately became a pilot. I was able to touch on a bunch of topics, but I think I've woven them together quite nicely so there's not just a chapter on domestic violence or a chapter on how men view women as incompetent rather than viewing men as competent. I mean, that's kind of all woven together. I think it's a good finished product. We're on our second printing, so I'm really happy about that, so.

Jennia: Yeah, that's definitely something that shows that it did go together well. Well, apart from chapter reorganization, was there anything you initially tried with the pacing that you later realized didn't quite work?

Lola Reid Allin: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. And I guess—so with memoir, say as opposed to novel, and keeping in mind that it's a more or less finite-box time period, there were things I left out. Was it Elmore Leonard (it's typically attributed to William Faulkner, but there's some conversation around that) says, "Kill your darlings"?

Jennia: Yes!

Lola Reid Allin: There were some excised paragraph[s], excised sentences. And I say excised because I urge people to not just cut them but to excise them and save them in a file named "Deleted Sections," or whatever you want to call it, you know, "The Title of Your Book: Deleted Chapters," or "deleted sentences" or even deleted words that might be perfect, but they don't work in that book, it just sort of takes you off on a different tangent—

Jennia: Ahh.

Lola Reid Allin: —So I really had to be focused on going toward the success of being a pilot, getting my pilot's license, the empowerment of that, and how it helped me leave my husband, how it helped me in future years in making decisions.

Jennia: Well, as you approached your book's ending, how did you decide where to stop it as far as where it came across in your life?

Lola Reid Allin: I could have gone on. One of my girlfriends, who is pilot, said, "But Lola, you didn't talk anything about working for de Havilland or flying Twin Otters—very much about Twin Otters. Or becoming the first employee of the de Havilland flight safety and being the director of the Twin Otter training program, or flying Dash Eights. How come you didn't talk about all that?" And I said, "Well, because . . ." Yes, it's interesting, absolutely—

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: —but the goal really was wanting to become a pilot, taking flight lessons, then thinking, "Can I become a pilot?" Then I became a pilot. And then I picked several very interesting, probably frightening, incidences that could have ended my life. And then I end with a final one with a flight between the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: And it's an electrical failure. So we have no radios, no navigation equipment and were in cloud. So we have to turn around, but we have to get out of cloud first. So that was pretty scary. It's a good place to end. You know, I could have gone on, but yeah, I think it ended up nicely. I mean, yes, I went on and I did other things in aviation, but then it becomes too long and too unwieldy and do you really need it? It is difficult to know, but . . .

Jennia: Right, because your life is still continuing. It's not as if you're—you know (Lola laughs), you end your book in, let's say just picking a random year, 1985. Your life didn't just stop in 1985 and you sat on the couch the rest of the time doing nothing. But yeah.

Lola Reid Allin: Right, and it wasn't like some of the other books in aviation that talked about one particular incident. But the issue too also had to deal with, women have been flying since 1910.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lola Reid Allin: But not commercially. It was only when women wanted to fly commercially and earn money commercially that there was amendous tremendous pushback from men and from society because it was considered an inappropriate job. And heaven forbid, and my own grandfather said this to me, "You'll be taking jobs from men." So we have a lot of work to do as a society, in reshaping and reforming our opinions of what people are capable of.

Jennia: Well, if you had to give listeners one last bit of advice, what would it be?

Lola Reid Allin: Take that first step. Just start writing. What you write first is probably going to be awful unless you're a child genius (both laugh). But yeah, start writing. Keep writing. Just take that first step and keep on doing it. Most successes aren't—even though they appear to be—overnight successes. It took me a long time to write this book. But if you want to write a book, I certainly urge you to take courses. Absolutely. There are lots of them around. And write. Let's take that first a step.

Jennia: Yeah. Well said. Thank you again!

Lola Reid Allin: Thank you so much, Jennia!

Jennia: And thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information. And if you enjoyed today's show, I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared the episode with a friend. And then please join me next week when my friend LC Son will be here to explain why authors should have their own platform for selling their books. Thanks again!