Writing the Memoir: Consider the Consequences

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soothing ripplesIn my post, First Steps to Writing a Memoir, I pose questions regarding purpose and goals that should be answered before committing to write your life stories. There is actually a fourth point to consider: Should you write a memoir?

How will writing and publishing your memoir impact you? Do you have the right to tell your story when it includes the part others played in it – portions of other people’s lives they may not want uncovered?

Here are some things to consider.

You will reveal things about yourself. You will do some major soul-searching, digging deep into your past. What you pull out may not be pretty. Are you ready to open the door on your own secrets? Are you ready to share the intimate details of your life and have others truly know you?

To write an effective, authentic, cohesive memoir, you’ll likely need to revisit or even relive the pain you’d rather forget. You can’t gloss over the tough stuff. You have to dive in, come clean and carry on. ~ Laurie Rosin*

You will reveal things about others. The old axiom that says, “You can’t please everyone,” is certainly true when you send your memoir out into the world. Not everyone will be happy with how you portray them. In exposing the part that others played in your story, you risk offending and/or alienating them. When these people are family or friends, you might want to ask yourself if telling the story is worth the affect it will have on important relationships.

When we write memoir, we pull back the curtain on our private lives and invite readers in. We willingly give up our privacy, or a chunk of it. But because we’re human, our stories also include other people: parents and siblings, teachers and neighbors, lovers and friends — and they haven’t exactly signed on to the deal. ~ Tracy Seeley**

You will risk legal action against you. A writer can be sued for defamation with the claim being that what was written is not true and has caused injury to reputation or character. Another legal claim is that of invasion of privacy, or the public disclosure of private facts. According to Stephanie Rabiner, Esq., “It is illegal to reveal truthful, yet private, facts to third parties. The facts must not be of public concern, and would offend a reasonable person if made public. The information must also legitimately be private and known by few, if any, other people.” To be sure of the legal ramifications of your memoir, you might want to discuss the possibilities with a lawyer.

Only you can decide if you should tell your story and how it should be told. But in deciding what to leave in and what to leave out, perhaps the best question to ask is, “Who or what do I serve in the telling of it – me or the story itself?” Your memoir is not so much about what happened but about the importance of your journey, about what you brought into it and how the journey changed you.

Writing memoir is not for the faint-hearted…. Our first obligation is to the art and truth of our story. And that means not censoring ourselves…. Write with respect for your subjects, even if they come across as louts. And tell your story true, artfully and with courage. ~ Tracy Seeley**

(Read *“Don’t Gloss Over the Hard-to-Write Parts” by Laurie Rosin and **“Important Privacy Issues in Memoir” by Tracy Seeley.)

What has been the most difficult part for you in preparing to write your memoir?

How Important are Your Dreams?

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Pick a Throwaway Title and Keep Writing

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Writing2In my own experience with picking a title for my fiction writing, I either know what it will be before beginning the manuscript or within a few chapters after the story gets going. So I didn’t worry when no concrete title surfaced for AJ Jackson’s memoir This New Mountain. I knew one would come to me in time.

There came a day, though, I just couldn’t write another word. Seeing an empty space on the title page above my name and in the header/footer made me freeze up. Like having an odd type of writer’s block. I sat and stared at the page for the longest time and could not put one more word to paper (or screen).

I had already brainstormed a list of titles, thinking if that was settled it would help me move forward on the book. This list included Born to Serve, Liberating Process, Liable to Confound, and In Lieu of Surrender. I thought these were clever, catchy titles considering most of the stories in the book had some kind of connection to the laws of the land – thank goodness none of them made it past the first stage. There was only one, The Amazing Life of Ann Jackson, that I seriously considered. But none of these choices truly grabbed hold of me and said, “This is it, this is the one.” They didn’t speak about AJ’s past or her future or her now. They just didn’t feel right.

But I needed to move forward, and that’s when I came up with a solution without spending any more time and frustration trying to choose an actual title. I needed something either bland or outlandish, but not something I would grow attached to or mind tossing out when a real title came to mind. Within a few minutes of realizing I needed such a thing, I had my throwaway title – and the book became Dirty Underwear: A Memoir of AJ Jackson. A very catchy title (and don’t ask where that came from), but now I could at least finish the chapter I was working on when writer’s block hit, and move on.

It wasn’t too long after that, while searching the web for quotes to include with each chapter name, I found this: 

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. ~ Ursula Le Guin

And there it was. I had found the true title of AJ Jackson’s memoir. It embodied what all the others lacked – strength in today, while suggesting movement and something that existed before. Goodbye Dirty Underwear, hello This New Mountain.

“Dirty Underwear” is still the title I use when I don’t know a story or its characters well enough to come up with one right away. It works simply because it doesn’t fit and doesn’t have to, and because giving it up isn’t a hard thing to do. I don’t normally go a long period of time without penning a title to something I’m working on. Maybe my mind works subconsciously to come up with a suitable one, not liking the alternative attached to my stories. Whatever the reason, my throwaway title works every time.

What are some mind tricks you use to make sure you get things done (like setting your clock ahead so you won’t be late)?

Country Remedy: Cough Relief

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Woman Holding Cup of Water and Lemon(From Vinnie Ann “AJ” Jackson)

This remedy for a cough came from my brother-in-law who grew up in the hills of Alabama. He is now 86 years old. Like most country remedies, I never measure the ingredients for this cough syrup. It’s always been a by-guess-and-by-golly thing, but I’ve given my best guesstimate in the directions below.

Cough Syrup

honey

lemon juice

whiskey

Take a small juice glass and add about three tablespoons of honey plus just enough lemon juice to thin the honey. Add a tablespoon or two of whiskey to the honey/lemon mixture and stir. Sip it throughout the day or night. It stops the cough for a short time, enough to let you get some sleep at night.

What’s your favorite way to calm a cough?

Writing a Memoir Like a Novel: Point of View

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Looking BackA novel can be written in one of several points of view, but a memoir is written exclusively in first person – the “I” viewpoint of the narrator. While this is a great vehicle to draw readers in and bring them close to you and your story, the key to good writing is to take readers to a place where they feel what you felt without telling them how to feel.

For memoir, you use yourself as the lens through which readers see the world. You can change the focus or direction of the lens (your eye or your perspective), but it’s not wise to consistently focus on the lens itself — or, the inner workings and specifics of your turmoil. It’s much better to write scenes and describe experiences to evoke a feeling in the reader, rather than tell them how to feel, or to navel gaze. ~ Jane Friedman*

Author and editor Alane Salierno Mason prefers “an eye seeing to an I talking” which is the difference between an “I memoir” and an “eye memoir.” Try describing what you see in a one-dimensional photo of the Grand Canyon, and then do the same after standing on the edge of the real thing. The one can only take you so far, the other can take you anywhere. And the reader with you.

When it is an eye, it is in constant relation to the outside world. This kind of eye sees not only from the narrator’s point of view [or] only from the point of view of the moment; it stands and moves both inside and outside the self. It might even see from the point of view of ancestors, both literal and literary; it might see itself swept along in historical and cultural and political currents and in others even more mysterious. It sees itself swimming in a larger sea than that of the individual. ~ Alane Salierno Mason**

Accomplishing the kind of re-focus necessary for an “eye memoir” requires you to step back from who you are now as the writer and return to the perspective of who you were during the period of your memoir. Take us with you across a lonely schoolyard or into a dark woods. Show us a face of joy, let us hear the words that cut you deep. It isn’t, “I cried when my parakeet died,” but, “I turned then, right before the screen door slammed. And I saw – in the insistent beat of his wings, his delicate head thrust forward, eyes intent and focused on mine – his longing to be with me. The door hit with a dull thud, and not the sharpness it should have. And then he was falling, silent and still, to the floor….”

This thoughtful, empathetic, reflective persona is the real heart of memoir, the voice that readers will follow and want to know. The discoveries it makes over the course of the story, the wisdom it uncovers and brings to the tale, even its confusions and uncertainties — these will carry the audience through, well beyond the limits of “me, me, me.” ~ Tracy Seeley***

In filtering every detail through your eyes, your story becomes your truth. And in the end, your memoir is not so much about what happened but about the importance of your journey, about what you brought into it and how the journey changed you.

What would be the most difficult part of going back and seeing your life again through the perspective of younger eyes?

*Jane Friedman, “Your No. 1 Challenge If You’re Writing Memoir”

**Alane Salierno Mason, Writers Digest Magazine, July 2002, “In Memoir, It’s the Eye that Counts”

***Tracy Seeley, “Creating Memoir That’s Bigger Than Me, Me, Me”

Patience

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Writing a Memoir Like a Novel: Story Arc

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PuzzleButton3A well-written memoir utilizes the same elements of a novel, including scenes, dialogue, characters, and a beginning-middle-end structure, also called a story arc. A story arc moves the main character/protagonist (you) from one situation to another, one state of being to another. Without this structure and focus, the memoir will quickly become a disconnected, chaotic jumble.

Take the time you need to structure your story before you write. Drawing your arc is not something you can knock out in the half-hour before dinner. It challenges you to survey the tangle of emotions, motives, repetitions and complexities of events you lived through with the cold, dispassionate eye of an editor. It asks you to know not what is important or meaningful to you, but what is important or meaningful to the story. ~ Adair Lara

The Beginning of the story arc introduces the protagonist and the protagonist’s problems, desires, and conflicts. This is the set up for the rest of the story. In many memoirs, the story begins initially in more or less the present state and then moves into the telling of the protagonist’s journey.

The Middle is full of obstacles, physical and emotional, that the protagonist encounters and strives to overcome or at least move through.

The End includes the biggest hurdle, the climax, and a tying together of loose ends. The ending is tied to the beginning in some way, often through resolution or revelation regarding the initial internal conflicts. Many memoirs return the reader full-circle to the beginning of the story.

Here are a few examples of beginning-middle-end structure:

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is called “a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant.” In the beginning, Ms. Walls is riding through New York City in a taxi where she sees her mother rooting through a Dumpster – but she’s too embarrassed to stop. We’re then taken into Ms. Walls’ childhood and learn the things that shaped her life and her relationship with her parents. The end takes us to a time past the beginning of the memoir  to a point of healing.

My Dog Skip by Willie Morris begins with the protagonist finding a photograph of Skip, “his eyes flashing in some momentary excitement. Looking at a faded photograph taken more than forty years before, even as a grown man, I would admit I still missed him.” We’re then swept into the life of a boy and his dog growing up together in Missouri – a dear story of love and friendship that eventually brings us full-circle (I dare you not to cry).

For This New Mountain, I start with one of AJ Jackson’s “adventures” that shows a typical day in the life of a private investigator, and present her internal conflicts regarding her age, financial situation, and being “stuck” in a dangerous job she knows she can’t do forever. In the middle, we journey with her as she learns the ups and downs, and ins and outs, of her profession. In the end, AJ has worked through many of her initial conflicts, but she also faces the facts and makes life-changing decisions.

Adair Lara writes extensively about building a story arc in the Key Elements of Writing a Memoir. Here is a brief summary, taken from her article, of what defining your story arc looks like:

  • [Beginning] Decide what you, the narrator/protagonist, want in the story you’re telling. The struggle to achieve this desire drives the book.
  • [Middle] Detail what you did to get what you wanted and what got in your way.
  • [End] When the narrator/protagonist gets what he wants, or doesn’t, or stops wanting it, the story has reached the end of its arc. We see him changed by all that has come before.

Knowing and understanding your story arc will keep you focused on what the memoir is about and guide you in what to include and what to leave out, as well as what needs detailing and what can be touched on through summary.

What memoirs would make good study material for your own?

Keep Looking Ahead…

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Memoir Writing: Organizing Your Life Stories

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PuzzleFlowerThere are times when a writer sits and stares at a blank page or screen without a clue as to how to start a story. This is not a classic case of writer’s block, it’s more like the gear shift hasn’t been properly engaged. But once it’s moved from park to drive, the journey can begin. In writing, that nudge to get going may simply be to tell yourself, “Just start.” Begin at the beginning, the middle, even the end. None of it’s written in stone. The order, and the writing itself, can be changed and rearranged at any time.

When I first started the project that became This New Mountain (a memoir of AJ Jackson), I asked AJ for the basic facts of her life: birth date and place, family history, etc. I also gave her a tape recorder and told her to tell her stories as they came to her. As it turned out, AJ began with her divorce, which was the driving force that led her to become a private investigator. This is not how the memoir itself begins, and it’s not the foundation of the book, but it is an important part of the puzzle in understanding who AJ is. She continued to record the stories that were the most important to her because they were the ones that were closest to the surface, the ones she had continued to engage in over the years. As the stories came to life in my mind, questions also came up, and those led deeper into her past which, in turn, led to other, untold stories.

Writing down your most important stories first, your most vivid memories, is one way to “just start” the process of putting your memoir together. As in AJ’s case, one story will most certainly spark your memory of others.

To some, this may seem too haphazard a way of doing things.

Stacey Dubois, in an article for the Writers Digest blog, tells us that our “memory’s natural organization” is special when it comes to autobiographical memory. This “episodic memory (memory of events)…is unique in that all of the memories are relevant to YOU. Unlike other systems of memory, autobiographical memory contributes to the formation of your sense of self…the memories form the story of your life.” Ms. Dubois has these suggestions to take advantage of the way memories are organized naturally in the brain:

  • On separate sheets of blank paper, make a timeline for each sphere of your life (school, work, family, friends, etc).
  • On each timeline, segment and label the important periods.
  • Separate these periods from each other with defining events – turning points such as moves, milestones, deaths, etc. (these can differ from timeline to timeline).
  • Take notes on what you remember from each period, staying completely within one sphere at a time. It’s also a good idea to make your first pass over the activity chronologically, even if you are not planning to organize your memoir that way.

The main advantage of organizing the important periods of your life with all their turning points is that you’ll then have a detailed outline and the makings of the stories themselves. Another advantage of following Ms. Dubois’ advice is that it could help you decide what the main focus of your memoir will be (if you don’t already know). Once the foundations of the stories are laid out, you’ll be able to see patterns or themes, and ways to organize the memoir. You might even recognize you have the makings of more than one.

The most important thing, no matter how you do it, is to write the stories down. Don’t worry if the focus or the theme doesn’t come to you right away. Just start, and you’ll be surprised how all the paths begin to converge farther down the road.

Have you started writing down your life stories?

First Steps to Writing a Memoir

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Woman with typewriter.We all have stories inside ourselves – and the longer we live, the more we acquire. Our pasts are filled with quirky characters, impossible situations, remarkable adventures, and lessons learned. At some point, most of us think about writing it all down, if only to make sense of our lives and capture important moments from our past before time can snatch them away.

Before starting on the process of recording the past, a few questions should be answered.

Biography or memoir?

A biography is a life story, an account of a person’s life from beginning to end told by someone else. An autobiography is the story of your own life told by you (or dictated to someone else). Your history is a great gift to give to your friends and family.

An individual’s memoir is a biography or autobiography of the important events in that person’s life. It is focused, usually has a theme woven throughout, and tends to be more anecdotal. Memoirs are a good way to explore the “meaning of life” as you’ve experienced it in the context of certain events or within a particular period of time. A person can write multiple memoirs, each covering something different from life experience (but an individual will have only one biography).

As an example, President Obama’s biography/autobiography would chronicle his life from birth through the present, whereas his memoir might focus on his years in the White House.

My publisher tells me that bios and memoirs are the hottest selling books on the market right now. But it’s “who you are” that will be the selling point. So unless you’re a celebrity, making it onto the bestseller list will likely be an unfulfilled dream. That leads me to my next point. 

Overall goal of the memoir?

When I first began working on This New Mountain, a memoir of AJ Jackson, the reason was to help AJ leave a record for her family of the things she’d done as a private investigator, repossessor, and process server. But after I finished the drafts of a few chapters of her adventures, we both thought the audience of the book could be much wider – reaching beyond her circle of friends and business associates (see my post “Beginnings: The Goal of a Memoir”).

In my case, shifting the goal meant refocusing and strengthening the elements of fiction writing (scenes, dialogue, beginning-middle-end structure, etc) to create a piece of creative nonfiction that would appeal to a larger group of readers. At this point I knew the road to publication would be a long one, but a journey doesn’t start until you take the first step.

Some writers enjoy the process of writing for the sake of writing itself. For them, finishing a poem or larger manuscript – and knowing they have done their best – is an accomplishment that brings its own joy. Writing for yourself or for friends and family are both goals on par with the “loftier” one of publication.

Purpose of the memoir?

If you’ve decided you want to publish your memoir, ask yourself why.

Writing for revenge or betrayal

Your story can be about revenge, absolutely, but the story itself should not be wielded as a blunt object, a cat-o’-nine-tails, or a bludgeon. Instead, while writing about the hideous aspects of life, you should attempt to teach us something about the behavior of those involved, about your behavior, about all human behavior. Let us into your story by shedding light on our own dilemmas, fears, happiness, or wide-eyed wonder…. Writing a tale that seeks revenge, you’ll quickly see that tale as merely a list of hurts, which, when you get to the end of that list, is a list that may not interest even you anymore. Revenge as a topic is good; as an intent, it’s not.  ~ Marion Roach Smith, “Don’t Write A Memoir to Get Revenge”

Writing a story focused only on pain or as a means of self-help for others

Writing through grief and tragedy is a proven method to heal, but it is not a proven method for getting published. I say this not to be insensitive, but to bring needed attention to the fact that these stories are prevalent, and very few publishing houses are accepting them…. Life experience, or overcoming a personal challenge, is not enough expertise to help others, especially when it comes to physical and mental health. ~ Jane Friedman, “Five Common Flaws in Memoir Projects”

In “Writing Memoir: Art vs. Confessional” Susan Cushman writes:

There are plenty of opportunities to talk about the trauma in your life… If it’s healing you’re after, there are the traditional and private venues like the psychologist’s office and the church confessional. If you believe you just have to write about what happened to you, go ahead. But don’t try to get it published, unless you do the hard work of spinning that painful experience into the golden threads of an artful memoir.

Deciding on the type of biography you want to write, along with its goal and purpose, are the first steps that lead to the foundation of your memoir, and will drive the course of the entire manuscript. In future blog posts, I’ll talk about how to make a memoir more artful and less confessional.

Are you thinking about writing your biography or memoir?