Post #85 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Memoir Writing Prompts: Which Tree Do You Want Me to See?
You’re going to write your memoir. What will you include? We all know that a memoir is a slice of life rather than a chronological recounting of everything that has happened to you. If you have more than one major facet of your life you want to document and share, you might choose to write multiple memoirs. So the obvious problem is to choose a focus for a single memoir.
Gazing out the window of the Coast Starlight train from the Bay area to Albany, Oregon, I saw hundreds of miles of forests and that reminded me of all the details in our lives. All of the forest was interesting but that would be too much to include. The point would get lost and readers would eventually tire of the story. That caused me to reflect on which tree I’d write about.
Would it be the tree severely burned on one side and still green on the other? I knew there was a story of determination and perseverance there. Would it be the young tree growing out of the decaying stump of a once majestic spruce? This would be the story of a second generation picking up where the previous generation left off. Would it be the perfectly shaped tree standing off by itself? Perhaps this was the story of a beauty queen, isolated by her own search for perfection. Would it be the tree with branches broken by the winter’s heavy snows? Surely this was the story of life’s adversities. Would it be the lone deciduous tree in the mist of evergreens, its spring buds still forming? I could imagine a contrarian in this story.
The list could go on. I haven’t even mentioned the moss covered tree, its upper branches seemingly dead or the spindly tree growing in a sandstone area. There are not only many trees but many types of trees living in different conditions. So it is with our lives.
The task for the memoir writer is to be selective. You can’t include the whole forest.
MEMOIR WRITING PROMPTS
1. Make a list of 10 major events you might write about.
2. Next to each item on the list, write how telling that will help others learn something important about you. Only write one or two sentences.
3. Take the item that may best allow you to explore your past and write about it for five minutes. Is there enough richness to this topic to be the focus of your memoir? Can you already imagine a table of contents? If not, perhaps the item is just one piece of a larger story.
4. Take the item that may best help others such as your children and grandchildren understand you and write about it for five minutes. Is there enough interest in the topic to provide insights about you?
You could take this exercise as a way to sort through your life and decide what you want to include. You cannot tell everything so learn to be selective in ways that help you better tell the big story.
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