Are you Writing a Memoir—or True Life Fiction?

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Truth or Fiction—how do you want to write your life story?

This is a pithy and often difficult question that many memoir writers ponder—and it keeps them from writing. Are you writing—or are you worrying about how to write your story? It’s time to think hard about your choices and get back to your book. You can write—and finish—your book in 2012!

 

Reasons why you might choose fiction:

  • You want the protection of “the fictional wall.”
  • When your family and friends ask: did that REALLY happen—you can say “This is a novel. Any similarities between persons living and dead are coincidental.” Or whatever disclaimer you decide you use.
  • Your memory isn’t good—and you need to fill in details to make a good story.
  • Your memory isn’t good—and you don’t have enough “truths” to create a memoir, but you have some ideas and experiences that will make a good book.
  • If your story has traumatic truths that “out” someone, you want to be able to create fictional characters to carry the story.

A great book to help you sort out these questions is Robin Hemley’s Turning Life into Fiction.

Reasons to write a memoir:

  • The power of your story comes from the fact that it is true—it really happened.
  • You want to draw upon your real experiences to help others—by claiming your story as true, you will be a better storyteller and deliver a more powerful message.
  • Writing a memoir means exploring memory, meaning, and lived experience, and you enjoy that kind of writing.
  • You believe that writing and publishing a memoir offers a significant legacy or lesson—a takeaway that will change the lives of others.
  • A memoir can be a legacy, testimony, a witnessing of aspects of life that are real and true—and you want to deliver that kind of work to inform and inspire others.

The History of Sex in the Twentieth Century—what a title! It’s one of the memoirs written by Jane Vandenburgh, our guest for our NAMW member teleseminar. I’m so excited to talk with Jane—as she’s an example of someone who has as she puts it, “Put memoir in my fiction and fiction in my memoir.”

Find out more about how she chose the genres for her books. Click here to read more about the upcoming teleseminar.

More of Jane’s books:

The Physics of Sunset—fiction

Failure to Zigzag-fiction

The Architecture of the Novel—a terrific how-to book

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Memoir Writing and Creativity in The Year of the Memoir—2012

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By now quite a few people in my networks have heard that I decided to call 2012 The Year of the Memoir. Why did she do that, you wonder. What will we call next year?? More importantly–what is Snoopy writing in HIS memoir?

First of all, I trust in the powers of creativity. They are greater than I, or you, or anyone, but the deal is, we have to find ways to listen to that still small voice that whispers brilliance in our ears and we need to find ways to bring our creative thoughts and ideas into form in the world. The idea of a baby is quite different than birthing one, don’t you think? The idea of a book is an idea—until you bring it to life on the page. We need help to get our work born, we need inspiration and support. Techniques and goals.

We need to have a sense of being able to do what we want to do—so declaring it is a way to keep ourselves honest. Think of the writers—Dickens, Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck among others—who wrote and shared with other writers their creative experiences, their doubts and fears.  Each of them announced what they were working on and in so doing, created intentionality and a goal. As well as a well-oiled support group. The Impressionists did this as well, discussing, painting, trying, failing, and still they painted and changed the world.

Inspiration and Perspiration—how much of each?

Inspiration helps many of us get ourselves planted in the chair to write, but as you know, writing requires some effort, some perspiration, in order for us to wrestle with the various ideas coursing through our brains. We wrestle with technique, with images, with memories. With the Inner Critic, with the voice of family.

But we keep writing. That’s the only way. We learn from our reading—how did that author keep ME turning the pages? Why do I find it hard to put down some books and others I can’t finish. Ask those questions, learn from everyone around you. Have a beginner’s mind.

I have likened writing a memoir to a journey in other posts. This week I began teaching my online workshops and was so jazzed to hear the eagerness in the voices of the students in the workshop. They are engaged in such a creative dance on their journey to a finished memoir.

Here’s what some of them said:

  • Writing validates my experience. I feel better about who I am when I write.
  • Not writing made me realize how much I need to write to know who I am.
  • Writing my memoir has helped me get along better with my mother and ex-husband.
  • Writing about the past helped me to let it go.
  • The year of the memoir idea made me realize that I want to get my book done this year!

Having a name for the year set an intention for many of these writers.

How do you set your intention?

How do you keep your goal in mind?

Some people journal, some write out intentions and put them up on the wall.

Others put their intention on the calendar and create accountability.

What method do you want to start this week during the first month of the Year of the Memoir?

How many words will you have written by Feb. 1??

Think of Snoopy writing his memoir, and smile. It keeps you open and flexible, smiling. Keep writing!

 

 

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Writing Memoir in 2012–The Year of the Memoir | Understanding and Conquering Your Inner—and Outer—Critic

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When you first decide to write, you’re excited—eager to explore the memories and stories that are part of you. Memories shape who you are and where you hailed from. In a memoir, you weave the legacy about your life and times. You know your story—but perhaps the whispers of the ever present inner critic voice interfere with your story flow—what will people think; you should be ashamed; you will embarrass the family. Don’t air the dirty laundry; you know only part of the truth, so be quiet. Your mother will roll over in her grave if she found out you wrote that.

The inner critic can be part of the “outer critics” the family voices that stop you from writing. Perhaps you feel you need to be loyal, to not make anyone uncomfortable. Some memoir writers are told openly by family members not to write a memoir.

These voices are too familiar to memoir writers, making you want to throw down the pen or close the computer, and turn on the TV. You don’t want to lose your family, and you don’t want make them angry or cause a war between cousins. Writing a memoir is an act of courage, even defiance against powerful family dynamics that urge you to keep silent, and to keep the secrets.

When you write a memoir, you reclaim your own voice, your stake a claim to your version of the story. Every family has multiple story lines. There’s the “official” version, controlled by the most powerful people in the family, usually the parents or those who have the most to lose. The “lesser” points of view are most often held by the children or those not in power.

Who decides what version of a story to believe? Who is not listened to? The answers to these questions will be decided by who’s in power. But you have a point of view, you have a story that needs to be told. You have to write past the old voices and the inner critic.

Many families have a “scapegoat,” or a clown—often the most sensitive person who has a unique, even unpopular view of the family stories. Those with the most power may try to suppress these alternative points of view. If you are in that role, it’s your job to tell your story as you see it.

You need to create a safe, sacred space to keep writing. Write your story in a protected bubble to help you listen to your own voice. Write frequently, write often. The force of your voice and your writing energy burns through the blocks from the past

  1. If the critic voice stops you, take dictation of what it’s saying. Get the voices out of your head and onto the page where you can be more objective. Keep asking, “What else to I want to say that’s important?”
  2. Think about where you learned the critic voices. Write down this information. Freewrite—meaning writing quickly without stopping– your memories of power and powerlessness in your life.
  3. Visualize scenarios where you feel powerful and in charge of your voice. Use strong verbs. Don’t write in the conditional “would” or “might.” Describe your world and your memories vigorously with bright descriptions, sensual details.
  4. Begin with an image. Choose a photograph and write about it. Describe the person in the photo, and what was happening in the photo. Write why you chose the photo. What is it telling you?
  5. If the critic voice says: “I don’t know how to write; my family will hate me; how do I know I am writing the truth?” keep freewriting past this voice. If you were silenced when you were growing up, you will need to work through it now.
  6. DO NOT hit the delete button when you feel critical of your writing. DO protect your writing. Treat your work like a young seedling that needs protection.
  7. Write in cafés, where the sound of life may drown out the critic voices.
  8. Remember: if you’ve been abused, neglected, forgotten, or silenced, you likely learned not to value your own point of view. Writing your story can change that. Keep “telling it like it is.”
  9. Write for five minutes. Stretch your ability to keep writing—work up to fifteen minutes at a time—doing a freewrite. When you feel like stopping, write for five minutes more. You might be tempted to stop as you get close to core emotions.
  10. Make a list of the 10 reasons it’s important for you to write your memoir.
  11. List 12 things you will do during the Year of the Memoir to get it done.
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The Year of the Memoir–and Juicy Creativity

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Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. –Rollo May

 

 

 

It’s the Year of the Memoir—welcome to 2012. At the National Association of Memoir Writers, we are celebrating the full riches of the memoir, and inviting everyone to write their memoir this year.

Writing as you know is about creativity—and keeping yourself creative, actively writing, and engaged with your material. Post-holiday is a perfect time to center on your creative life and get focused.

When you think about it, a large part of our writing lives is spent reflecting, musing, journaling, and being “pregnant” with creative energy and ideas. We need to listen to the voices within—which means we should write, muse, and write some more! We need to stimulate our creative minds, to “fill the well” as I call it, so we have a lot to draw from when we sit down.

The more we use and stimulate our creativity, filling the well with beauty and good ideas, the more it will be there for us when we need it. For inspiration about creativity, I enjoy Rollo May’s The Courage to Create, which I recommend to explore ideas about creativity expressed without jargon. He talks about inspiration and breakthroughs, and explores the role of the unconscious in creativity—one of my favorite sections. 

He makes several important points about creativity:

1.      He says that “the unconscious seems to take delight in breaking through…what we cling to in our conscious thinking.”

2.      The breakthrough shakes up our calm world, the status quo of our thinking.

3.      During the breakthrough, everything is vivid, as we are in a heightened state of consciousness—which intensifies memory and the senses.

4.      The breakthrough comes during the transition between work and relaxation.

Einstein said, “Why is it that inspiration seems to come while I’m shaving?”

Another expert on the creative process, Brenda Ueland, author of If You Want to Write says,

“Inspiration comes very slowly and quietly…the imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering.”

So, go ahead and clean your house and prune your roses, while tuning into your creative processes bubbling deep within. Who says that only writers who are avoiding their desks have the cleanest houses? Maybe those who are properly messing about are engaged in the highest level of creativity!

Tips to Enhance your Creativity in 2012

1.      Journal every day for 15 minutes. Writing begats more writing, and invites the flow of ideas.

2.      Immerse yourself in creativity—read a poem, meditate on beauty or something that inspires you.

3.      Go to an art museum and allow other forms of creativity to fill your well.

4.      Take long, or even short, walks, as Brenda Ueland suggests, noticing the details of plants, houses, animals, and people.

5.      Read inspiring literature of any genre. If it is well written, it will fill the spaces within your unconscious mind with good raw material to process.

What is your favorite way to invite creativity?

What are your writing plans for The Year of the Memoir?

 

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