Writing from Life - The Writing Life

Writing From Life: 10 Suggestions for getting your memories onto the page

"All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story." Isak Denesen

"My story is important not because it is mine. . . but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track . . . of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity . . . that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally . . . to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but spiritually.

I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are yours. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human." Frederick Buechner

Sometimes I wish that I had five dollars for every person who has confided with heartbreaking sincerity that he or she has led a fascinating life--not only worthy of a memoir, but also a big-budget movie, preferably starring Tom Hanks and Rene Zelwegger. I also wish I had started a fund for every time I've been faced with the task of editing a badly written memoir. With my memoir fund, my far-off dreams of owning a Tuscan villa might become a reality.

There are so many ways that a memoir can go astray, so many literary sins that befall them. Before you begin, let's cover the basics of memoir writing starting with this premise: We all have stories to tell and possess an inner richness, an inner castle with rooms of gaudy splendor. However, here's something to think about: in most castles, even those that employ a huge staff of minions, some of the rooms are kept off-limits to the public.

Remember a memoir is not a therapy session or an opportunity to vent. Shine a light of truth, but don't dwell on hatred, revenge or self-pity. Many of us have had our share of drenching sorrows and unfair burdens. But all these troubles do not necessarily make a story. A memoir does not equal self-absorbed. Nor does it equal downer. While there's a good chance that you'll uncover difficult moments and sad truths, also write about the good times and the times in between. Strive for balance. Write about people who you love, hilarity and good sex and the magic of a first snow fall and champagne moments.

Frank McCourt neatly sums up the complexity of memoir writing: "There were parts in the books that were hard to write. My mother's humiliations, my father's leavings, the sordidness of my going around from pub to pub looking for him, and then trying to get him to come home. Then there's the time he took the pound my grandparents sent him and just went off and drank it. But it's the process of writing that I enjoy. That's why I was put here."

Uncover your memories. We each have our own particular methods to stir our memories. Look through family photos, read old letters, diaries and magazines from important years in your past. Construct a time line to trace the milestones in your life. Using crayons, (that waxy smell evokes childhood) draw pictures of your home, your neighborhood, and school. Make lists of schoolmates, neighbors, teachers, and friends. List all the landmarks in your childhood and recall vacations, trips, and adventures. If you discover that a memory has taken hold while you're going about your ordinary routine, attempt to trace it to its source to track the association in your current world. What were you doing or thinking about when the memory surfaced?

Tell a story. Like a novel, a memoir needs a beginning, middle and end, but it also needs to incorporate many fictional techniques. Create a hook with the opening. Write some parts of your story in scenes so that the reader feels as if he or she were close up as the story unfolds. You'll need conflict or the story will drift and become static. Use setting details and dialogue whenever possible. (A caveat here: do not reconstruct long passages of dialogue from actual conversations held twenty years ago. In memoir, dialogue is used succinctly, more for flavor than substance.) Work to create suspense-like fiction the reader needs to wonder what happens next?' As you structure your memoir, keep adding new elements, twists and complications to maintain reader interest. Add cliffhangers to close a scene. A memoir is not a mere list of events or memories; it's a story.

In the opening of Homer Hickam Jr.'s Rocket Boys he creates a hook and introduces the broad themes of his story: "Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. I didn't know that if a girl broke your heart, another girl, virtuous at least in spirit, could mend it on the same night. And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The other boys discovered their own truths when we built our rockets, but those were mine."

Search for themes. A memoir is not an autobiography because while it tells the story of a life, it also explores the undertow, the underlying issues and themes beneath the occurrences. Theme serves as a unifying factor, helps you resist the temptation to digress and report trivial matters. Sift through the raw material of your past and note the turning points, regrets, and significant memories. Are there recurring motifs? Questions answered or unanswered? Did historical events or cultural trends play a part in your story?

Sound like you. Create a distinctive narrator's voice, one that contains your personal stamp. Your voice sounds like you on the page, just as your voice sounds like you on the telephone. If you're known for your irreverent sense of humor, then your memoir should showcase each rollicking wisecrack. If you're thoughtful and scholarly, that can work too. Don't force a voice or borrow one from your favorite author. Be yourself, but with the understanding that your voice illuminates your best selfÖat your most witty, contemplative, sardonic or bold.

Analyze published memoirs and notice the structure and the reasons that the writers chose to tell their stories. Some writers focus on one memorable experience, others write to sort out the truth of their past. Reflect on how they express their themes and how much they reveal of themselves. Does their style make you read between the lines? Do their stories stir your own memories?

Here is a list to get you started: Mary Karr, Charles Kuralt, Ruth Reichel, Ernie Pyle, Tobias Wolff, Maya Angelou, Barry Lopez, Truman Capote, Isak Dinesen, Frank McCourt, Joan Didion, David Sedaris, Nuala O'Faolain.

Focus on the most interesting events of your life. A memoir is not a list of every major event in your life, or a birth-to-death chronology. In fact, chronology is often not the best method to organize a memoir. As in fiction, you focus on the most compelling segment of your history. As you focus on specific memories, push yourself to untangle the complexities of events and emotions.

Tobias Wolff wrote two memoirs, This Boy's Life and In Pharoah's Army. The first book covered his first eighteen years, the good and bad; the second book begins with his army stint during the Vietnam War. Neither book covers his adult years or his career teaching at Syracuse University. Here is the opening paragraph to This Boy's Life: "I have been corrected on some points, mostly of chronology. Also my mother thinks that a dog I describe as ugly was actually quite handsome. I've allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful story. My first stepfather used to say that what I didn't know would fill a book. Well, here it is. "

Tell the truth. While every fact in your memoir is likely not verifiable, the emotional truth of memory must be accurate. Here is Tobias Wolff on the subject: "If you're writing something you're going to call a memoir, I think you owe it your readers to be as honest as you can be. And that includes sometimes putting things in a memoir that may not make you proud, but are an essential part of the story. Otherwise you end up with a book in which you're the one who always has the virtue while everyone else does everything wrong. You're the one who always says the smart things while everybody else says dumb things. That's just a way of going back and doing right what you didn't do right the first time. But it isn't very interesting."

Employ literary flair. Anchor your memoir with specific and sensory details. These details will connect your reader to the large and small moments of your past, and transform recollections into meaning. However, details are never a list, and never substitute for a thoughtful exploration.

Write for the imagination but also for the ear. Use metaphor, imagery, repetition, and rhythm. Sound communicates and lends the words resonance and clout. Mayo Angelou: "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness." Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

Ask yourself what's in it for your reader. Writing a memoir implies that you believe that your life story is a worthwhile subject, that your motives have moved you past silence. While you are the source for your memoir, readers must find meaning, value, inspiration and information. Hopefully the truths and realizations that you uncover along the way will move and surprise your reader, render your recollections into stunning illumination.