Post #44 – Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Welcome to day three of our celebration with Linda Joy Myers, author of the newly released book, The Power of Memoir. All week on Women’s Memoirs, Linda Joy is answering your questions about memoir writing based on her experience crafting her own memoir and researching and writing her new book.
In our two previous audios, Linda Joy has talked about:
– writing the dark stories and
– writing our adult-shame stories.
Today, Linda Joy considers the question from Robin, a question that puts the spotlight on the issue of organizing the vignettes that compose a memoir.
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Ever wondered about the differences between personal essay and memoir? Listen in on Friday when Linda Joy talks about these two story forms. What happened to Thursday? We have a special treat for you. Linda Joy Myers has given us a story, recipe, and photos for our KitchenScraps series of ScrapMoirs. Check back tomorrow when we publish it. A hint: Expect relatives, Iowa and lemon meringue pie. Then we’ll resume our question and answer audios on Friday and the interesting question from Tanya.
In addition to her new book, The Power of Memoir, you may also be interested in Linda Joy’s memoir.
memoir writing tips
memoir writing
memoir
writing memoir for healing
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you so much. I have been solely focused on writing the individual vignettes and I just couldn’t figure out how to step back and see this as a book. Linda Joy, I appreciate your comment about sense making. It seems that is now my next step. I’m also going to give some thought to the reader.
This is such a great forum for writers. I appreciate the opportunity to get to ask my question and to hear this discussion. I’ve already listened to the audio twice.
I think I’ll also see if any kind of device can help me organize my vignettes. Any suggestions as to how I might do this?
Hi Robin, Thanks for your comments. As you write your vignettes, then place them on your timeline. I talk about the timeline tool in my book–where you begin to see visually how the stories fit together, or if there are too many spaces and you need to knit them together. Each year in my retreat we draw big timelines on large sheet of paper and create a picture of their lives through story. It is a great tool that can help you see what you have done and where you are going. Also, people often get huge psychological insights by plotting the vignettes on the timeline.
Best of luck to you as you create your book!
–Linda Joy
I just discovered this site. Cool. Love the short audios. Sorry I missed the full interview but am listening to each of the questions and responses.
Linda Joy, I like your explanation of use for a timeline. I used one once in a course I was taking and I do recommend it. I have a lot to learn and these audios and other posts will become a regular for me.
Linda Joy, I don’t know if you can respond to another question, but I wonder how you handle a memoir that covers a very short period of time. A lot happened and many people were involved. But length of time just wasn’t a factor. The timeline doesn’t seem to be particularly helpful to me for the current writing I’m doing even though I will definitely use it for a second memoir I want to write. Any thoughts?
Hi Martha,
I’m not sure what the problem is with the memoir that covers only a short period of time. What problems are coming up for you? Are you having trouble organizing it? The timeline tool is helpful even if the span of time is a week. You simply create the tool to work for your time frame. But if that’s not quite the problem, write again and I’ll answer later.
–Linda Joy