Post #9 – Women’s Memoirs, Conversations – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
For this month’s Memoir Moment, I have the pleasure of interviewing Kim Pearson. She speaks to us with insights earned from years of experience not only as an author, but also as an editor and ghostwriter. It is this last category that has helped Kim focus not just on how to tell her story or on a story but on someone else’s story. This means she has had to get into the mindset of others and effectively tell their stories.
Years of writing have led Kim to her Three Rules. Briefly, these are: 1. Drop your reader into an opening scene. 2. Foreshadow your theme. 3. Remember your audience.
Listen now as Kim explains what she means by these rules.
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Kim’s book, Making History: How to Remember, Record, Interpret and Share the Events of Your Life is part research tool, part how-to guide, and part pep talk for writing your life stories. Click on the book cover for a direct link to Amazon.
What are your thoughts on writing an opening to your memoir? Leave us a message in the comment section and we’ll respond to you.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Good interview. I’m working on a life story of my elderly long-married neighbors who banter back and forth a lot. Got the interview on my voice recorder. I wanted to write a story, but their back-and-forth, feeding off each other is so fun I’m thinking to write it more like a play. Have you ever seen that done? I’ll probably need to have an intro paragraph, though.
Hi Linda:
Yes, Kim is pretty amazing. Lots of experience and lots of great advice.
As to your question. You can handle life stories in many ways and a play form is definitely possible. If you haven’t done much screenwriting and run into problems, you can always switch back to a combination of dialogue and narrative (scene and summary).
The only suggestion I’d make is that you get right into the story. I would stay away from the introductory paragraph as that is a stumbling block to the reader. Just as Kim said, “Drop the reader into the scene.” In this case, start with dialogue.
Let us know how it goes.
-Matilda
Hi,
I thought the interview was very good. You gave some important points when writing memoirs. I totally agree with you that you need to just drop your reader into the scene. Using narrative and dialogue makes the story immediate and pulls your reader into the scene with you.
My sisters and I have written a memoir of when we were small children and lived in a rural subdivision. The book should be published this spring. It is childhood stories that celebrate family life.
I am also working on putting together a workshop to help people write their memories. They think they have to do this grand thing and are surprised when they find out how easy it is to put their stories on paper. Our’s came about because we had asked our parents to put their stories on tape for us, but for whatever reasons that didn’t happen and then they passed. We didn’t want that to happen with our children so we decided to do a couple of books with our memories in them. It has been a great experience.
Hi Cindy:
Congratulations on the upcoming publication of your family memoir. It is wonderful when sisters collaborate on writing their memories. Have you seen the book by the Dolan sisters? It is called Satellite Sisters’ UnCommon Senses They do an effective job of staying clear about their own memories while handing off each vignette to another sister.