Memoir Guest Blog and Writing Prompt: Judy Mandel Discusses the Challenges When the Story Is Not Forthcoming

Post #33 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

I’ve read many powerful, painful and down-right, gut-wrenching memoirs in recent years. But never have I read a woman’s personal story—particularly one that began with an event she didn’t even witness—that affected me more than Judy Mandel’s Replacement Child.

Through skillful writing and an incredible head for story structure, Judy brings to life the tragic events surrounding the crash of American Airlines commuter Flight 6780 at 3.45 p.m. on January 22, 1952, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She actually weaves the lives of her family and the pilot on that terrible day into her own memoir—building tension for the tragedy at the same time she explores and comes to grips with her role as replacement child for her older sister Donna killed in the crash. It’s powerful storytelling that will keep you reading…long after you should have turned off the light and gone to sleep.

Matilda and I look forward to having you join us for our call with Judy Mandel. We’ll discuss her story, how she pulled together the pieces that had either been hidden from her through the years or told in bits and scraps. We’ll also get her to share her thoughts on book marketing. So you all have no choice; you have to listen in to what will prove to be an instructive conversation.

While you are invited to listen in by phone on Friday, we know that that’s not always convenient. So we’ll post the recording here on Women’s Memoirs next Monday. Judy’s book has been called captivating and riveting; it’s also well crafted. There is plenty in this book for the reader as well as the writer.

We need your help. Give us your questions for Judy. Use the Comment form below to leave a question or thought for her. We’ll incorporate your questions into our interview. Here are the details for getting on the Friday call:

Date/Time: Friday, February 19, 2010, 3:00 PM EST (12:00 noon Pacific)

Phone Number: 712-432-0600 (access code: 998458#)

You can learn more about Replacement Child by visiting Judy Mandel’s website and blog. You’ll also get some good ideas for creating your own book site. Judy is an aggressive marketer. She uses social networking, YouTube videos, a blog, family photos. It’s a rich site that will draw you to the book. She often uses her blog to talk about other people who share elements of her story—whether relating news about a plane crash, discussing the experiences of others who have learned they too are replacement children or describing the inner strength of a burn victim.

Judy posted her New Year’s resolutions. I had to laugh when I read #2: “Embrace the marketing of Replacement Child as a second job. (You think it’s easy? It’s not!)” She’s not kidding, but she also proves the benefits of taking the job seriously. It’s how we found her.

And now, Judy shares her writing story with our Women’s Memoirs readers:

Writing a Memoir Poses Difficult Decisions—Startling Discoveries

by Judy L. Mandel

When I started writing Replacement Child, I thought it would be a pretty straightforward task of remembering, writing, organizing—and hopefully making sense of my life until now.

I had no idea.

The best thing I did to jump-start my writing was to join a writing workshop. It gave me a deadline to have something to read each week, and helped me put a writing regimen in place. My workshop pals were the first to encourage me, and to make me work harder at my craft. I am so grateful for their insight and honesty in those sessions. I started every day writing, for a at least two hours and up to four hours.  I noticed that after that time, my writing suffered.  Sorry to say that I worked on my corporate client writing in the afternoons. Sorry guys.

Memories—What Memories?

At first, I thought I had no memories at all. I couldn’t remember a thing about my childhood or growing up.  Maybe I should have realized that this was part of my reason for writing the story, at the risk of being cliché—to find myself. Then, after at least six months of mining my memory, I couldn’t stem the flood of stories.

My writing came in the form of scenes. I almost thought about them as movie shorts. There was no order to my remembering, so my writing had no cohesive structure for a very long time. It was a series of seemingly unrelated moments in my life—until I took a look at them as a whole and started recognizing themes. Even then, I reorganized my chapters at least five times. If it wasn’t in printed form, I would probably still be doing that!

Honesty is Hardly Ever Heard

As I wrote the scenes and episodes for Replacement Child, I came smack up against the things I didn’t want to remember: resentment that I denied my whole life; feelings of being outside of my family; anger at my father; my failed marriages. Or, I didn’t want to delve into my feelings about those times.  I would initially gloss over those parts, but reading them in workshop, and getting feedback from my group, I saw that those were the very topics I needed to explore and expand on if I was going to write an honest memoir that would uncover the truths I needed to discover.

Am I a Replacement Child?

Coming to realize that I was indeed a “replacement child” for my sister who was killed in the plane crash, was the most difficult—but beneficial—truth I was to uncover. It has explained to me many of my life decisions, my attitudes and my conflicts.  I also truly believe that this understanding has helped me forgive—especially my father.  Talking with other replacement children recently, I’m finding that none of us thinks of ourselves this way until the facts are laid out for us. In my case—I did it myself.  Then, the commonalities of our experiences are startling.

Who’s Story Is It Anyway?

Then there were the questions of how much to tell.  In my case, I struggled with how to fulfill the responsibility to my parents to tell their true story and be faithful to their memory.  And, there were things I unearthed about my parents that they may not want told. How to handle that? Until her sudden death this past summer, my sister Linda was my touchstone on many of these issues. But, even we didn’t agree on all of it. Being older, she knew more than I did about our parents—and it took her a long time to clue me in. My other issue was that because I always felt I was an insignificant part of the story, I had to work hard to find my role—not unlike my real-life conundrum of figuring out who I was in this family drama (a common problem for a “replacement child”). In this way, my four years of writing was a journey of self-discovery.

Writing Prompt

Often, the hardest part of writing anything is getting started. If you have long been wanting to write your story, but haven’t been able to get off the mark, try this:

Each day, write one episode or anecdote you remember vividly, whether it’s your favorite birthday or the day you found out you were the love child of aliens from Venus. It doesn’t matter. Just get into the habit of writing what’s on your mind from the past as if it is a scene from a movie. Pay attention to including action in your scene–just like a movie–as well as reflection. My guess is that your theme will emerge over time and you will be able to grab it and run with it. That’s how my memoir, Replacement Child, developed over the four years I was writing.

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Tagged as: art of writing, Book Marketing, craft of memoir writing, Memoir Author Interview, Memoir Writing Prompt, Women's Memoir Writing, Writing your memoir