Post #45 – Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Today we present the fifth day of our Linda Joy Myers week and the fourth part of our conversation with her. We hope you got to read her touching story of Aunt Edith’s Lemon Meringue Pie that we published yesterday as a KitchenScrap vignette in our ScrapMoir series. I can still smell the tangy-sweet scent hanging in the air.
Personal essay versus memoir
Today, we’re back for the next question and answer from our interview with Linda Joy. This question comes from Tanya who raises the interesting issue of differences between personal essay and memoir. Listen to the audio below as Linda Joy sheds light on this point. We invite your ideas of personal essay and memoir in the Comments section below.
In our three previous audios, Linda Joy has talked about:
– writing the dark stories
– writing our adult-shame stories
– organizing your memoir
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Have you ever struggled to stay motivated with your memoir writing? Do you sometimes feel that the story you are writing is so heavy that you just can’t keep going? Most writers I know run into a brick wall somewhere along the writing path, myself included. Join us tomorrow when this question is posed by Katherine and Linda Joy discusses finding ways to stay motivated.
We recommend Linda Joy Myers new book, The Power of Memoir. If you missed her memoir, Don’t Call Me Mother, we’re sure you’ll find it of interest.
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First, I want to say what a great question Tanya asked of Linda today. It is one I have asked myself as well. However, I’ve come to notice a distinction between a personal essay and the memoir. I’ve been compiling three personal essays for the WriterAdvice contest that WomensMemoir posted a while back. Thank you for that by the way! What has been the distinction I’ve found, is that I’m taking some of the most impacted or turning points in my life from my memoir, and narrowing them down to only 750 words. Now, with so much detail in an actual memoir, this is not an easy task, but it has helped me with getting straight to the point! Hopefully really catching the readers attention. As Linda mentioned, personal essays are much shorter than life stories. We have limited words to put on that page, in hopes of making a large impact. In writing these three personal essays using excerpts from my memoir, I’ve found it to be much easier in “showing” my story and not just “telling” my story. With this, I have now gone back to my memoir, making edits/re-writes, and noticing my lack of detail in “showing”.
Second, I just received Linda’s new book yesterday (The Power of Memoir), and haven’t been able to put it down! In struggling to write (complete) my memoir since 2001, Linda’s book has given me a new approach. An outline, you could say. I’m very thankful that you both introduced Linda and her book to your site! I highly recommend this book to all current and future memoirist!
Aha–isn’t it great when we learn something new from the boundaries put on us through a contest or word length! You make a good point–too often a long memoir can allow us to meander around with a lot of narrative “telling” and not enough “showing,” which we really do need to curb when writing compelling final drafts. In my memoir, Don’t Call Me Mother, I had a movie playing in my head for scenes in the garden, smelling roses, or trembling as the huge train roared into the station. I smelled, saw, and heard the scenes in my memoir. The quieter scenes wove description and metaphor, for instance about the smell and feel of my mother’s sweater in the suitcase as she prepared to leave again, in with observation and thoughts. Since my memoir is written through a child’s POV for much of the story, it was important to describe through a child’s perception, allowing her to grow up as time moved on.
We all need to find the right scenes and sensual details to unlock the treasures of our stories.
Thanks for your input, Michele.
–Linda Joy
Michele and Linda Joy:
This is such an interesting discussion. When I think back to work on the collective memoir Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation that Kendra and I wrote, I learned a great deal from one exercise.
I included a series of short vignettes from many of the 100 women that I interviewed. I permitted myself a mere 350 words per vignette. I had to read and re-read the transcripts in order to find the main message. Then I kept editing words (not rewriting since these were interviews) until I had the essence of what they said. Talk about feeling your word muscles bulging!
-Matilda
I have written a book about my family, comprised of my own memories, family stories, interviews with family members, and research of the historical era. In it, I have created scenes and dialogue, always trying to stay true to the story and the personalities.
I’m not sure how to categorize it in query letters. Do I call it memoir? Life story? Narrative non-fiction?