Post #43 – Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Yesterday’s blog introduced our author conversation with Linda Joy Myers. She answered the question about handling the dark moments in our memoir writing. If you check the comments section of that Women’s Memoirs blog, you’ll find a good discussion of the issue. We invite you to post you comments in today’s blog. Linda Joy has graciously agreed to respond to your comments.
In today’s audio, we move on to a question asked by Renee Cassese about writing memoirs that focus on our adult mistakes. Drawing on her experience as a therapist and the work she did in writing her own memoir, Linda Joy responds with insights that may be useful to you.
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Have memoir vignettes and wonder how to put them together into a book? Join us tomorrow for Linda Joy’s comments on how to organize a memoir.
Linda Joy mentions her own memoir. If you haven’t read it, you’ll find that it is both a moving story and a source of ideas for how to write an effective memoir.
memoir writing tips
memoir writing
memoir
writing memoir for healing
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Kendra & Matila,
I like the new sound-bite-size audio interview format. These are just right for any day and time.
Renee’s praise of Linda’s book is well-deserved. I’m glad to hear Linda address the question of writing a healing memoir dealing with our adult lives–addressing material that we may be ashamed or embarrassed by.
Linda’s advice to engage in writing tasks when we cannot dive into the heart of our story…yet…is particularly useful.
Janet Riehl
Hi Janet:
Thanks for your comment. Although many of us who teach memoir writing urge the use of vignettes, I thought Linda Joy made a strong case for it in this audio. The logical approach to memoir writing often does not work, at least not early in writing. Writing from the heart, writing where our emotions are willing to be exposed is certainly a call to write a single vignette.
Thanks for listening and participating as you regularly do. We always value your comments.
Matilda
PS Glad you like our short audio format.
A vignette is like a snapshot. We can write them “in the heat of the moment” to capture raw feelings, sensations, and a sense of being “live” and on the spot of our feelings, reactions, and particular memories. In a snapshot, a moment in time is captured, a moment set in the chemicals, or the pixels, never to be changed.
When we write and reflect on that moment, we can enter that snapshot at an angle–through the eyes of the person we were then, or through our point of view now. Or perhaps we might write about the point of view of the person holding the camera. We can write about what happened just before or just after the snapshot. Or if we are writing about ancestors, we can imagine their day, or how life was for them by doing research to learn about the times they lived in.
Everyone who experiences a single scene sees it through their own eyes. Your vignette represents your view, your personal truth.
–Linda Joy