Linda Thornburg: Write The First Draft of a Great Memoir in Thirty Days, Part Two

Linda Thornbug runs the Memories Into Story website. See her bio under Writing and Editing Services.

“Writing on the wood is prohibited.” DSC07600 (Photo credit: Nicolas Karim)

If you have discovered that your primary motivation in writing your memoir is to right a wrong, you need to dig deeper. Writing about the past may change it in your mind, but it won’t change circumstances and it generally won’t help you to gain revenge. There is nothing wrong with writing as a form of therapy, but the writing ought to be directed toward expressing and learning from your experiences, not toward feeling vindicated by exposing the actions of others. If that is your primary motivation, you are, quite frankly, stuck, and you need to find a way to get unstuck. The need to right a wrong is a victim mentality that will result in a poorer memoir.

Have you known people who keep making the same mistakes in life again and again? Who see the world through a lens so colored with their own sense of victimization that no matter what happens in their life they see it as bad news? They actually attract misfortune by the way they think. If you are one of these people, it’s unlikely you can break this cycle by yourself, because it is so powerfully reinforcing. Writing can help, but only if you approach it with the attitude that you will gather new insights about yourself as you write, and learn from the experience of writing, as well as from the experiences your life has presented to you. The lessons are there for you; think of them as rich material for your memoir, accept responsibility for your life and use your life experiences to create a memoir of hope.

I used the plan described in these blogs to write the first draft of my own memoir, A Different Drum, in exactly a month. I hope it will serve you equally well. If you follow the plan you will complete a manuscript in a month and be ready for the revision process. Revisions are the most important part of any writing project and they take time. But by having a completed manuscript, you will find you have the interest and energy to revise.

Happy writing!

Day One: Finding Out What You’re Afraid Of

Your first assignment is to confront your writing fears. Anything that is frightening can be made manageable by articulating and understanding it. And you do have fears about writing — because everyone does. So let’s review some common fears of memoir writers and figure out how to conquer them, or at least to tame them.

Fear number one: My life is too ordinary to be interesting.

You are unique and that makes you interesting. But if you believe your life is ordinary, dig deeper. List your accomplishments. You will be amazed by everything you have accomplished and you probably only remember a fraction of it.

This doesn’t have to be a complete or exhaustive list. Its purpose is to remind you of what you think are your greatest accomplishments. But notice something that happens in the process. The trajectory of your life begins to emerge, and that will bring you closer to discovering a theme for your memoir. In my life, writing has been important. So has accomplishment.

If you are having trouble with this exercise, ask yourself the following questions:

What am I most proud of?

What are the obstacles I had to overcome to achieve these things?

If you are fortunate enough to have so many accomplishments that you couldn’t possibly list them all, summarize the most important. You may want to use this list later to help you discover a memoir theme.

Fear number two: I’m not a good enough writer.

You are the expert on your story, which gives you an enormous advantage over others who might want to write it. To gain confidence in your writing ability, some short exercises may be in order. Here are some ways to boost your confidence:

·Write a letter to the editor on a topic you are passionate about. Edit it carefully. Send it and see if the paper will publish it.

·Write a story about something that happened in your life. Read it to your children, grandchildren or a friend. What kind of questions does your audience have?

·Write one paragraph describing a scene of your choice. Write it over and over until you are completely satisfied. Then read it to someone to see how that person reacts.

The truth is no one is a good enough writer. Writing is an activity that requires revision after revision. The secret to being a good writer is writing – and then revising. As a professor I had in graduate school said, there is nothing magical about the process. You may start with certain strengths, as I did, but you will quickly find that your weaknesses outweigh your strengths, no matter who you are. I think one of the reasons I love the activity of writing is that it is continually challenging. You can get better, but only if you continue to write.

Fear number three: It will be painful to review certain aspects of my life.

Writing is a solitary activity. Generally there is no one there but you and the computer or that blank piece of paper. You are in control of the process. If you are afraid of facing pain, do it a little at a time. Take one aspect of your life that you know you are comfortable dealing with and write a paragraph about it. Then write another paragraph that goes a little further into the painful area. For example, someone who suffered the death of a husband or wife might write a paragraph remembering a special holiday during the marriage and then write about what it was like to face that holiday alone. You will discover that when you are able to write about the painful periods, it feels good to get your memories and feelings down on paper. Writing about pain is therapeutic. In the process of writing, you find a release that would not have been possible otherwise. Try this exercise a few times and you will no longer have trouble writing about the painful periods of your life.

Fear number four: I don’t have anything original to say.

This is a variation of the fear “My life is too ordinary.” Worrying about not being original when you are writing about your own life is silly. Your experiences are unique; therefore telling about them will produce a unique manuscript. Your fear may be based in the fear of going deeply enough into your life experiences to find the interesting parts.

Fear number five: It will take too long and be too much work.

One of the reasons I wrote this blog is to show you that you don’t have to spend years writing a memoir. This fear is a sort of cost/benefit analysis statement that actually gives you a false estimate of the cost and benefit. By putting in a little bit of time, I promise you that you will reap a satisfying harvest. You may find that the habit of writing serves you well for the rest of your life.

Fear number six: The genre is already crowded. What if everyone wrote memoirs? The world would be flooded with bad literature.

If you are afraid of adding bad material to an overcrowded genre, you want to stand out. You want your memoir to be better than average and you want to develop a wide reading public. It’s good to know this at the beginning. You will have to work harder and do more revisions than those who are writing only for family and friends. The genre has been called overcrowded by some critics, but publishers have seen an appetite for memoirs. This presents an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

Fear number seven: I’m afraid people will see how imperfect I am.

Aren’t we all? If perfection is your goal, you’re probably living on the wrong planet. Think of the people you know. Are those you consider the most perfect also the most interesting? I doubt it. Our defects and blemishes make us human and they are what people are interested in. Or, I should say, they are interested in seeing how we overcome or surmount our imperfections. So in some sense, the less perfect you have been, the better your story can be, if you can show us how you dealt positively with  your imperfections.

Fear number eight: I’m afraid I’ll hurt people.

This is the most legitimate fear out of all those listed. One of the most difficult things about writing a memoir is telling an honest story without doing harm to others. There are a number of different ways that you might proceed. You could fictionalize parts of your story by creating composite characters that represent two or more of the people in your life. You could show your manuscript to the person or persons who you fear might be hurt and get their permission to use the material. You could change names and write under a pseudonym so that no one knows who the people in your story are. You could find metaphorical substitutes for certain incidents. For example, if you had a sibling with a disease and you were afraid of announcing or publicizing it to people outside your family even though that affected how you grew up, you could invent an uncle who lived with you who had the disease or one that was similar. There is no one right way to avoid hurting others. Each situation has to be evaluated on how truthful you feel that you must be at that point in the story and how important the information is.

Fear number nine: I’m afraid the people that I write about will try to punish or sue me.

Use the techniques discussed in fear number eight to work around this. Also, familiarize yourself with the slander and libel laws. The website http://www.enotes.com/first-amendment-law-reference/libel-and-slander is a good resource.

Fear number ten: I’m afraid of losing my privacy.

Then you obviously want to write a book that will be read by a wider audience than just your family. Consider writing under a pseudonym.

What fears do you have that I have not mentioned? By articulating your fears and finding strategies to quiet them, you will be able to write more productively.

Related articles

• Linda Thornburg: Write The First Draft of A Great Memoir in Thirty Days, Part One (memoriesintostory.wordpress.com)

Linda Thornburg: Write The First Draft of A Great Memoir in Thirty Days, Part One

Bean curd person of high skill (Photo credit: Wm Jas)

Linda Thornburg runs the Memories Into Story website. See her full bio under Writing and Editing Services.

Your life story is unique. There is no one else on this planet with the same memories and experiences. That makes you a fascinating person, so start with the knowledge that your life is worth writing about. It doesn’t matter whether you know you are fascinating, you think you’ve had the dullest life imaginable or you see yourself as a ne’er do well. You have a story that will captivate readers and can teach them a thing or two.

After thirty years working as a writer and editor and coauthoring a number of books for pre-teen and teenage girls I started a memoir writing business. I work with people who want to tell their unique stories to produce the best memoirs possible. The process described in this and subsequent blogs is the one that I used in writing the first draft of my own memoir. It was an intensely satisfying experience.

 In order to write fast, you have to have an understanding of what you want to achieve, so take a little time to prepare  for the writing ahead.

If you believe, as I do, that one of the primary reasons we are given this life is to learn and that you have indeed learned, then you have something valuable to share. One reason the memoir genre has become so popular is that it gives us a glimpse into the minds of those who are both similar to and different from us. We like relating to others through their stories. It takes us out of our own narrow perspective and yet we find things to identify with in the stories of others, things that teach us lessons as well as satisfying our curiosity about how others live

It is worth spending a little time thinking about this as you prepare to write. What do you see in your life that is unique, and what do you see that is common to others? For example, if you grew up with an exotic learning disability that made your life more challenging, that would be something that is, if not unique, at least different from the majority of people who will read your story. But if you found a way to learn and took joy in it, that characteristic is one you share with others and one that readers will easily relate to.

Just as each life is unique, so too is each person’s reason for writing. But we can attempt categorize memoir writers’ motivations. You might write as a form of therapy, hoping to find in the act of recording your life that you will better understand the things that have happened to you and find some peace. You might be someone who has to work through pain and or guilt. You might write as a form of self-validation, seeing your life more wholly and finding meaning in remembering. You might write to discover how you feel about certain themes or experiences, using the writing opportunity to gain more self-knowledge. You are the person who knows the most about your life, the primary expert, but by putting your recollections on paper you might discover aspects of your life you hadn’t considered before. Listen to these authors on memoir:

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory.

“Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.” Thomas M. Cirignano, The Constant Outsider.           

You might write to revisit certain times and understand why you made the choices you did. Maybe you write to answer big questions, like “Why am I alive and what is my purpose?” Many people write to leave a legacy, either for their families or for a wider audience. Others write because they want attention or fame, others to earn money.

What are your reasons for writing? Take some time now to understand your motivations and you will be guided in how you organize your material and the subject matter and word choices you make. Here are some questions to consider:

Who am I writing for?

What is my primary motivation?

What are my secondary motivations?

What do I hope to discover in the writing process?

Am I trying to justify my actions to someone?

What is my relationship to my past?

Most of us cannot fully articulate how we feel about the past. However, by trying to put our feelings into words, we open doors into our writing. If you believed only that  “the past is dead, time to forget it,” you would not be reading this. You have an interest in your past. Do you look on it nostalgically, regretfully, angrily or philosophically? There is no right answer and no single answer, but articulating how you feel will help you to see and understand your motivations for writing.