Post #114 – Memoir Writing – Matilda Butler
Is Memoir Writing About Vanity? No Way.
Some people suggest than only narcissistic individuals write memoirs. I disagree and you should also. Just shake your head and offer a sympathetic glance to the person making this misguided statement. Writing lets us examine our lives just as Socrates urged. And with thoughtful examination, we can use our past to positively influence our future.
When I conducted 100-plus interviews for the collective memoir, Rosie’s Daughters: The First Woman to Generation Tells Its Story, Second Edition
One woman, for example, spoke about the time when she saw how to take control over her life. She was in a therapy group and had been talking about her life and struggling with what she should do. Suddenly, she got it. She saw that she needed to go back to school, to get an education so that she could find a good job. Then she could leave her husband and provide for her children. She stood up, thanked the group for helping her to see clearly, and turned to leave. The therapist said, “But you’ll be back next week, won’t you?” “No,” she replied, “I get it and now I just need to do it.” By examining her life, she could change her future.
Another woman told of her dream to someday speak Spanish fluently. It was a dream she postponed year after year. About six months after our interview, she emailed me that she was now in Mexico, living with a family so that she could learn Spanish. She brought her dream to reality only after our interview, after the examination of her life. She felt sure that without the self-reflection, she would have never have taken action.
So many of the women I interviewed told me that they had never examined their lives before. Many saw the same mistake over and over and now felt they could change their future. Understanding our lives is not an act of narcissism. It is an act of introspection and, for many, an act of bravery.
Do you remember this quote from the philosopher George Santayana?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So look deeply at your life. The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense (1905)
I wish it weren’t true, but without reflection, without remembering, we do tend to repeat our mistakes.
Fortunately, we can learn. Writing will help you make sense of your life. You’ll look at your past, see how it has influenced your present, and understand and change so that you can have the future you want. Without reflecting on your life, your past will be you future. Think groundhog day, year after year.
When you write, look for patterns of behavior. Look for the ways that early influences may continue to shape current life. For example, one of the women I interviewed was physically abused by her mother for many years. When the woman studied nursing, she learned how patterns of abuse repeat from one generation to the next. With this knowledge, she was able to determine her own future and not allow abuse to be passed on to the next generation.
Today, I’ve put together five tips for you to help you make the most of writing your memoir.
5 Tips for Writing about Your Past, Your Future
Writing Tip #1. Not sure where to start? Think about the turning points in your life. What are the two or three times that define you as the “person before” and the “person after.” These may be good times. These may be bad times. They may have happened in an instant or they may have occurred over a long period of time. Either way, they helped define you. They might involve people or places. Take time with this tip, but you’ll probably know your list rather quickly.
Writing Tip #2. As you write about your life, try keeping a journal. While some memoirists say you can’t really write a memoir unless you have kept a journal, I don’t agree. If you have journals, that’s great. But many people have not kept journals and don’t think of themselves as the journaling type. However, it is interesting to journal while writing about your life. At the end of each writing session, put your insights in a journal. Write about surprising memories. About new perspectives. Follow your progress and how the act of writing is changing you and bringing up unexpected memories, even if they don’t make it into your memoir. One of my students, for example, said that she woke up one morning humming a tune she hadn’t thought of in decades. It had been “the song” that she and her husband shared. She was beginning to delve into her past and the deeper she went the more memories returned.
Writing Tip #3. Consider what you want others to carry away from your memoir whether you are writing for your family or for a broader audience. This will be your message. You may change the focus of the message as you write, but it is important to start with a message in mind. Don’t worry if this isn’t THE message. It will help you define what to include and what to exclude as you write.
Writing Tip #4. Dig deeply into your story. It is seductive to write about this and about that. To get to your true story, you need to avoid that temptation. Instead, dig deeply into the characters, the emotions, the dialogue, the sensory details, and the time and place of your story. By going deep, you force yourself to examine your life, not merely skim across the surface of it.
Writing Tip #5. It’s all about relationship. You begin a memoir thinking it is your story. You are focused on what happened and what changed. But a successful memoir writer soon realizes that it isn’t about you. It’s about a relationship between the writer and the reader. Even while writing about your life, you anticipate what you are saying to a reader, how your words will be understood, how what you have to say is relevant to the life of the reader. This give and take with the reader will help you understand your life better and may lead others to examine their lives life through your words.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Søren Kierkegaard
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