ANYONE HAUNTED BY A LIFE-CHANGING DECISION to step away from a passion or person will be intrigued by Nancy Deeds Resler’s captivating new memoir, “The Last Protégée.” Resler plans to lead a memoir writing workshop in Benicia on April 25.

“The Last Protégée” explores Resler’s years as a classical pianist and her relationship with her famous and forceful teacher Antonia Brico. The book is a disturbing and beautiful read. (Singer Judy Collins, who was a student of Brico’s about the same time as Resler, produced an Academy Award-winning documentary about Brico and her life.)

As a girl, Resler leaned into — and ultimately found the courage to resist — her master teacher’s extreme manipulations. Walking away from what might have been a life as a concert pianist haunted Resler for decades. Her compelling story is a universal one of coming to terms with difficult choices.

Resler, a Northern California resident, recently answered questions about the memoir and about the writing process.

Q. What was the most insightful thing you learned about yourself in the process of writing?

A. There were so many flashes of understanding during the years of writing. Dreams regularly provided guidance and insight. It was only after finishing, though, that I felt the writing had provided a more complete understanding of those years and, in some ways, a reconciliation.

Q. What was the most difficult aspect of writing the book?

A. The mountains of resistance that regularly stalled the writing. At the time, I wasn’t aware of the cause. Later, I could see how I really resisted diving back into that pain. This is why the writing took so long to complete.

Q. Do you have any regrets now over not continuing a musical career?

A. Yes, at times. I think that there is, as I read somewhere, a conflicted combination of regret and indebtedness that forms any contemplative individual’s relationship to her past. And yet, I would not have given up my two daughters and our family life to have had it. And, too, I don’t think that the relentless performances and travel would have suited me.

Q. Did you ever see Antonia Brico later in life?

A. Yes, my husband wrote to her asking for a picture for my birthday. She wrote him a lovely letter and enclosed an 8” x 10” portrait with a touching inscription to me on the back. She begged to see me when she came to California. I didn’t want to see her. But over the next couple of years, we met her twice — once for dinner and once we took her to the San Francisco Symphony to see Seiji Ozawa conduct. I remember how sad and wistful she was, watching Ozawa, his youth, his energy, his success and his maleness. She was in her 70s at the time. For a few years after, she sent me her annual Christmas letter. I remember as we drove up to the hotel to pick her up that first meeting, I was surprised at how small she looked.

Q. Now that the memoir is finished, what’s next?

A. I have half a dozen ideas for short stories that I want to write. Also, I have been playing around with a couple of interesting novels — one, about a composer and his struggles in creating, and the other, a story about an aging sculptor who slid so far into the margins that she became a bag lady. I have a sitcom I would love to write! I have always had problems choosing. The possibilities are always so much brighter than what might be possible, and I would have to live to be 110 and work with a fever to manage even half of it.

Q. Can you talk about your writing process in working with this memoir?

A. It took me a long time to begin. Finally, I realized that I had a lot of information and that I had to, in some way, organize it. I spent a good deal of time drawing up a chronological log for both Dr. Brico and for myself. I was interested in the relationship and how I felt there might be an overlapping of experience in some way.

Then it was sifting through the ephemera: program notes, letters from Dr. Brico, newspaper clippings and so on, and, of course, that period of my life remained mostly very vivid to me. Still, it required more than I expected to pull it all together.

Q. How long have you been writing?

A. I have been writing since high school, inspired, I think, by my voracious reading. Our little town actually had a library and it was filled with all of the classics. So I devoured Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Dickens early on. During my last two years of high school, I began to write poetry, morbid and truly awful. Now, I rarely write poetry, although a few of the pieces in my memoir could, I think, be called poems.

It wasn’t until after my daughters left home that I began to explore creative avenues again. At first, I took design and advertising classes, but soon rediscovered my passion for literature and (went) from that to writing. In 1984, I transferred to San Francisco State University and met professors and like minds that inspired me, especially my long-time friend, Cynthia Ford, who gave me Tillie Olsen’s book “I Stand Here Ironing” and urged me to write. The encouragement of that time was elemental, and without it I would never have had the confidence to really write.

Q. Have other more contemporary writers and poets been an influence on your writing?

A. Yes, certainly Carole Maso and writers like David Markson, Thomas Bernhard, W. G. Sebald, and several others who “broke rules,” rebelled against the traditional form of telling.

Q. What predisposed you to move from a traditional narrative form to a hybrid, or “post-modern,” form?

A. Toni Morrison has said that every subject matter requires its own form. I wrote the first draft in twenty-five prosaic chapters that, when I finished, bored me in the extreme. It took a long time of reading and a couple of classes in experimental writing before I found my form. For me, I think form has a lot to do with music — from playing compositions of varying lengths and moods; as a pianist, my repertoire over the years ran from one-page preludes to book-length concerti. The vignettes in my memoir, too, vary in mood and length. The form for the book, when I found it, felt natural to me.

Q. Do you think that your musical background affects the rhythm of your writing?

A. Yes, definitely. I want to feel the rhythm in the writing. Otherwise, I’m not happy with it.

Q. What is your writing schedule? Do you write every day?

A. I’m not a particularly disciplined writer. I have thought it is a very late rebellion against all of those years I practiced two hours before school and again in the evenings (I wonder how my family stood it!); and summers, I would often practice seven or eight hours a day before recitals, then after a week or two break, practice maybe six hours a day to memorize all of the new music which was to be done before Dr. Brico returned from Europe in late September.

Of course, until recently, I worked full time and for ten years, during most of the work on the book, I taught two or three creative writing classes online through UC-Davis Extension. So I was busy and there were times that energy flagged before I could get back to the book.

Q. Do you still play the piano?

A. Not often. I find that I have to be in a very strong emotional state to either play music or listen to it. A part of the playing comes from not being able to manage the perfection, so to speak, of the piece as I once could. To do this would require a return to the long practice hours — and also, my hands have changed with age. Listening to music — well, there are works of certain composers, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, and Mahler, that on hearing can liquefy me. I’m unable to go through that most of the time.

I think of George Steiner when he wrote, “I don’t know what music does to me. I know it does everything to me.” And yes, music can do everything to me. So, I protect myself and don’t often risk playing or listening to classical music. As for the rest of music, somehow I prefer silence.

Nancy Deeds Resler will teach a memoir writing workshop in Benicia on April 25. For more information, contact Kristine Mietzner at kristine2770.com or 707-319-4228.

Kristine Mietzner organizes writing workshops and leads writing groups when she’s not out walking her golden retriever Max. “The Tideline” appears regularly in The Herald. She can be reached at kristine2770@yahoo.com.