Lisa Febre

I loved reading the “Ramona” books as a little girl. Part of me would think, “I can do that!” My mother had given me her typewriter, and suddenly I could type as fast as I could think. Getting the words on the page was key to opening up my imagination in real time. I don’t remember specifics of the stories I was writing at the time, but I do remember they were very short (3-4 sheets of paper), and they were imaginative situations involving myself and my school friends.

One thing that is very important to becoming a successful musician (at any age) is a deep rooted sense of discipline. Sitting with your instrument, alone with no distractions, for hours at a time, working toward a daily goal, can’t be a drudgery. It has to be something you look forward to and that you thrive on, otherwise you won’t log the practice hours needed to succeed. Channeling that same discipline toward writing was basically the same process—I make a plan to “sit down at 1 pm and write” and just like with practicing my instruments, I don’t set an end time. I’m done when I’m done, and if takes an hour or three hours it isn’t important. The satisfaction of being able to play a technically difficult musical exercise better than when I sat down is the same as looking at my growing word count.

Writing for an online audience is tricky. People don’t want to read through six or seven paragraphs of introduction, explanation, or exposition. You learn very quickly that all of that needs to be done quickly and upfront or you will lose readers before they get to the important information. Just learning to hone that skill made a huge difference in the way I write. Instead of thinking “I have all the time in the world” to set up a scene or situation, I can do that in very concise language then get out of my own way and allow the rest of the story to unfold naturally.

The funny thing is that while I was writing the book, I wasn’t necessarily writing toward a specific goal or theme. After it was published, people were contacting me to tell me what parts of the book touched them. Only then did I realize what theme I had really be composing. One comment that touched me deeply was a friend (who has known me since we were teenagers) telling me that through this book she realized that I see the world through a different lens that most people. I’ve always felt that I see things differently than most people around me—the interconnectedness of everything, the animals, the earth, the people, and the unseen universe—and it affects how I approach everything in my life. With cancer, I just had a new thing to add to the list of elements. The obvious theme of the book is hope during the darkest hours, but unexpected theme was to look outside yourself for the inspiration you need to understand that life is worth living.

Unlike most forms of yoga, Ashtanga practitioners follow a prescribed set of poses (asana) every time we step on the mat. For 90 minutes, we move through memorized poses, and strive to do this 6 days a week. Because you’re asking the same thing of your body every day, two wonderful things happen: 1) you learn that you can never ask 100% of your body or you will get injured. Instead, you learn what something like 80% effort feels like, and the joy of having the energy to sustain your practice over long periods of time instead of burning out. And 2) with repetition comes familiarity. It’s very easy for me to identify changes in my body—bones, joints, muscles—because I’m able to compare today’s little ache with yesterday’s ease. What caused it? What can I do to help it recover? I suppose this translates well to music, writing, and personal resilience. I can spot changes in my performance, my writing, and even my mental state because I’m familiar with what is “usual” for me. Not what’s “normal” because, let’s face it, “normal” shifts and changes as we grow and evolve. My new normal, as a cancer survivor, is very different than before my diagnosis.

At first, I did find this to be a strange shift in writing technique. I was used to the editor giving me specific a topic and a word count, and figuring out how to fit my writing into those parameters. When I first started writing the book, I was thinking in “articles”—each essay having a beginning, middle, and end—being a little clinical and distant in the perspective, and I was having trouble moving on to the next topic. After I had written about seven or eight separate essays, I realized I was writing a book, and that something had to change. So with “Round the Twist,” first I have to give myself permission to allow more emotion into my writing. Second, I quickly had to learn how to segue into the next topic and even if each chapter still had its own arc, how to view the entire book as one large work with an even bigger story arc.

It really was a balance of all three. Yoga helped me care for my body, keeping it strong, and reminding me that even if something terrible was happening to me, I still had the strength and courage to do this thing that was so important to my health. Even if I couldn’t be on stage performing, by practicing my cello I was reminding myself who I was. I may not look the same, I may not feel the same, but music is a huge part of who I am and I am still here. Writing allowed me to see my journey as an observer at times. Cancer, as you can imagine, is really really scary. There are so many uncertainties, especially around survival and plans for the future. I would get overwhelmed with sadness and fear at times—I would cry or scream or just collapse into a ball—but I would sit down as soon as possible (sometimes later that day, or sometimes the next day) and write about the experience as honestly as possible. I would just type and type at the computer until I felt I had gotten it all out, and when I went back to read what I had written, I would see the situation for what it was. I was essentially taking my emotions and putting them into a little glass bubble, holding it in my hand, and assessing them from a more objective distance. My writing revealed to me what it was that I was going through, what was behind the emotion, and as time and treatments went on, I could ask myself, “Is this similar to the last time this happened?” I learned not to be afraid of the hard emotions, but to embrace and understand them. In a nutshell, I learned empathy for myself.

Cancer is not something people like to talk about. It’s scary for those diagnosed with it, and scary for those who love someone diagnosed with it. After my diagnosis, I was keenly aware that people did not like to say the word “cancer” around me, they were afraid to ask questions—basically they felt that if they didn’t acknowledge the cancer and acted like everything was normal, then I would believe everything was normal. But that’s not how it works. People with cancer need the love and support of their friends and family. There are very few examples of how deeply emotional a cancer diagnosis is. Take, for example, tv shows where someone is diagnosed with cancer: they go through treatment (chemo, of course, where their hair falls out and they vomit), then they are declared “in remission” and life just goes back to normal. This isn’t even remotely how it goes in real life, but very few observers understand this. My mission with the book was to illustrate just how complex our emotional lives become with cancer, in the hopes that this would help people not only get the support they needed, but to inspire others to interact with their friends with cancer in a different, more real, way. I’m a very outspoken and social person, not afraid to speak out about things. So many people are not like me, so they suffer in silence. I figured, if I don’t write or talk about these things, then who will?

Sometimes in order to tell a true story in a more cohesive way, events have to be moved around in time or given to a different person than the one who actually lived it. I had a character in the book named “Ella.” Although she is 80% based on a real life friend of mine, I used her as a vehicle for presenting elements of the stories of other cancer survivors. A memoir can get very complicated with too many people being mentioned or described—we have to remember that our readers can’t keep track of our personal lives the way we can. So to have three, four, or five people who are casually mentioned or who flit in and out of the story can be very confusing for the readers. Instead of bringing in a new and random person for just one paragraph, I found that “Ella” was a great way to bring in little details of other people while keeping the reader in the loop.

Being vegan and an Ashtangi go hand in hand thanks to a tenet called “Ahimsa”—the principle of non-violence in actions, thoughts, and words. This was really tested when, in “Round the Twist,” I had to write about the two doctors who had not treated me with respect while I was looking for my diagnosis. Because I’m human, I was angry and felt that primal need to criticize and complain. But, a deeper part of me reminded me not to respond to their unprofessionalism with cruelty. Maybe I could be a better person if I took a step back and approached the story from a less emotional position. I don’t know that I succeeded in coming out of the story as the bigger person, but I certainly tried. The most important aspect of sticking to Ahimsa in this situation was changing the doctors’ names—granting them public anonymity was the first step toward my own healing. I can thank Ahimsa for helping me work through this emotional injury in a more productive way, and to avoid insults and revenge.

Although I perform music, I don’t compose music. My husband is the composer. Our offices are right across the hall from each other, so while I’m writing I get to listen to him working on his music. I can hear his process for creating music, and I do find that there are many similarities between what he’s going through in his studio and what I’m doing on my computer. The first is sketching out your thoughts and plans for the day. For him, this means recording simple piano lines to match the movie scene he’s working on; for me, this means making a list of the main points I want to hit during my day’s writing session. From there, both of us fill in the gaps—adding more instruments, more intricate musical lines; fully describing a scene, adding emotional elements, creating dialogue in a situation where I may not completely remember the exact words of what was said. In both creative fields, it’s about filling in the spaces with more interesting things than you think you need.

At this point, I’m still contemplating how I’m going to balance writing and music. I am anxious to get back on stage and pick up where I left off, but with three years break from performing, I know that I’m going to be rusty. That’s a humbling realization. At this point, it’s easy for me to balance practicing my cello with spending time writing. But I have been contemplating what it would mean to focus more on writing (or editing for other writers) and when I do, I get really excited. So I think my “gut” is trying to nudge me more toward writing while reminding me that music is always going to be there—maybe I don’t have to be the most famous or successful musician to be happy. Maybe I just need to perform when it makes me happy, stop putting so much pressure on myself! And to find joy in writing and intellectually exploring my world.

I knew that publishing a book was a complicated process but I had no idea just how complicated that would be! At first, I was surprised when the publisher gave me six months to complete my final draft. I couldn’t figure out why—wasn’t my manuscript nearly finished when I submitted it for approval? Turns out, I needed nearly every single day of those six months to polish up my work, to wait for other editors to have their swing at it, and to finish adding in the rest of the elements to complete the story.

In October 2024, my second book was published: “Welcome to the Bright: The Winding Path from Survivor to Thrivor.” Part two picks up right where “Round the Twist” leaves off, and tells the story of my year in remission. For most cancer patients, the goal is remission, but when we reach that point, we often don’t know what to do with ourselves. We are profoundly changed by the disease and (for some of us) the near death experience. My third book will be published in the Spring of 2026, and it continues with my story, though it is not the main focus of the book—this book tells the stories of the many women cancer survivors I have met on my journey. There are some happy and hopeful stories, and others that are gut wrenching and heart breaking—but together they illustrate the many differences in the level of treatment patients receive and success of outcomes that can be possible.

I have loved working with AllAuthor—everyone who I come in contact with has been exceptionally nice and professional. I love the weekly book mock-ups and your social media presence. AllAuthor has to be one of the best services out there for authors like me who are working with independent publishers and need to find ways to market on their own.