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!

I had to wonder if he’d ever been faced with a memoir challenge: write for thirty minutes about the most meaningful experience of your life. That’s what those who were in Dr. James Pennebaker’s early studies about writing and healing, writing and transformation did, and so have many others who go on to write and publish well written books that inspire others. I talk about those studies and the power of writing to create new perspectives and new mindsets in my book The Power of Memoir. My guess is that he might fail the test.

Memoir writing is not for the faint of heart. Betty Davis said, “Getting old is not for sissies,” and the same is true for writing a memoir. We need to find our tribe, those of like mind who are exploring the planet, whether internally, externally, or both, and feel ourselves supported and buoyed up by being around them. We need to listen to that still small voice that invites us to write, to break open the silence in our lives. To speak our truths. When we do that, we open the world to us in ways we couldn’t have imagined. What is your writing tribe? Do you have support in your writing life?

Yesterday I was invited to participate in a wonderful teleseminar by Tina Games who is relaunching her book Journaling by the Moonlight. I met several women I didn’t know—though I knew Tina and Ruth Folit, who has produced the Life Journal program to journal online. Tamara Gold and Lynn Serafinn were new to me, but 90 minutes later, after talking about the transformational power of writing, the spiritual strength that writing can offer us, I felt connected and re-energized about my own writing and what I do with memoir writers.

This is some of what we were all saying:

1. Writing is transformational.
2. Writing creates new insights and awareness.
3. Writing frees us to find our truths and deepen our connection with ourselves.
4. Writing invites our Whole Self to revel in the creativity and passion of who we really are.

The purpose of writing is to discover, uncover, and recover –and to make a difference in our lives and the lives of others. First, we write for ourselves—not worrying about judgments or criticism—then we write to communicate to others. We might begin in a journal, and continue the journaling as we write our personal stories in a memoir, which is constructed of scenes and created to bring others into our experience.

Memoirs are more popular than ever! Let your voice be heard, and write a new story today! In your journal, online, to a friend, or as a new chapter in your book.

 Sign up for the NAMW newsletter to find out what memoir writers are up to, and to get writing articles and prompts in your inbox to feed the flame of your writing passion. Best of luck in your writing life!

Chuck Sambuchino is a wealth of information, and he is passionate about sharing it. He is an editor at Writers Digest, and the author of a just released humorous book How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack—we’ll have to ask him more about that—and an avowed addict of chocolate chip cookies. Does he sound human or what?

His book and blog Guide to Literary Agents helps authors in the always dramatic search for an agent, and is an important resource for our libraries.
Chuck has been around the literary and writing world for a long time, and will be at our beck and call for an hour at the National Association of Memoir Writers monthly member teleseminar on Friday, November 19.I’m sure you have questions for Chuck, and you can post them here. I will make sure he answers your questions, time permitting. So start now to think about how Chuck can help you with your writing life.

When I wrote The Power of Memoir and my own memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, I spent more time editing than writing! For some writers, editing is fun, creative and mind-stretching. Finding the right word, feeling out the best tone for the mood of a piece is like polishing the piece, much the same way as a carpenter puts on the final finishes of a handmade table. For others, editing is a chore, something that has to be done. Writers who want to improve their work—whose first draft is truly ready for the eyes of others?— need to edit for style and accuracy of usage as well as subtleties of meaning and language.

I’m asked to be a judge of memoir writing contests from time to time. As I sort through the pages, I notice certain patterns and bad habits that lead me to put a manuscript in the “no” pile. Let’s look at some of the ways that a contest judge views the early pages of a manuscript. Note: if you have a lot of errors on the first or second page, your judge will not read on.

1. Misspelled words and incorrect grammar suggest carelessness or ignorance, suggested that you are not ready to be  a professional.
2. Incorrect placement of periods and quotes, and the framing of dialogue means the person was either careless or doesn’t know correct usage. “My mother loved the new dress,” Betty said, taking off her hat. Note that the comma is just in front of the quote, and the attribution is simple, using the word “said.” “Screamed, shouted, muttered”—are almost never necessary in creating believable dialogue, and it shows that you’re a beginner.
3. Misuse of “it’s” and “its,” ‘your” and “you’re” “there” and “their” are my pet peeves. These mistakes show up all over the internet and even in newspapers—shocking! But just because it is everywhere doesn’t make it right.
4. Flat language, such as using “there is, there were, there are”—too much of the verb form “to be” leaves the work listless. Nothing is happening when things are just “being.” Find active verbs, work on reconstructing sentences so they are moving along and interesting.
5. Dangling participles that don’t modify correctly show the person doesn’t understand how to diagram a sentence. Remember, in the old days, you had to know how things hooked together and you knew what modified what! “Driving in the car, the dog hung his head out the window.” Here, the dog hopefully was not driving! Correction:  “As I drove the car, the dog hung his head.”
6. At the beginning of a shorter essay or vignette, it’s best to bring in the action, characters and situation early in the story. Long rambling explanations of the back story or hard to follow pieces of history confuse the reader. What is the through line of the story? Where does it begin and end through the character’s eyes and experience?
7. What growth, change, insight, or new revelations does the main character—in a memoir it’s you!—have by the end of the vignette? Too often stories meander unfocused to the last page, and the reader does not get the point.

Final suggestions: As you write your first draft, allow yourself time to add in details and ask yourself questions: did I use scenes and sensual detail? Does the reader, who does not know me, see and experience my world through their senses? Does spell check give the correct answer for every word—often it’s incorrect for the default setting in grammar and spelling, and you have to check each word yourself.

Think of your work as having layers, each encounter with your manuscript leading to a more polished story. And, don’t forget to enjoy the process!

I’m so excited to be able to have a conversation with Jane Friedman this Thursday September 2 at the free NAMW Memoir Writing Roundtable!   You simply need to register by clicking here to participate or receive a link via email to download the audio recording.  Jane is a contributing editor at Writer’s Digest, and an energetic, knowledgeable, and inspiring speaker. I told you about meeting her at a conference recently, and how she energized the room as she talked about creativity and publishing. Jane knows so much about how we need to shape and educate ourselves so we can succeed in the professional writing world.
The topic for this week is Evaluating your First Page for Red Flags. Jane will talk about how to take a long hard look at your writing, especially on the vital first page that agents and editors view.
Please join us! Your writing life will benefit from Jane’s experience and wisdom.

By now, many people have heard about the power of memoir writing to help the healing process in mind and body. As I mentioned in a previous post, because of my book The Power of Memoir, I receive many questions about memoir writing and healing, and I’m answering them here through a series of posts.

Writing to heal yourself is a very powerful process. If a writer has a deeply personal and painful story, how should he begin to get it onto the page?

Start by considering the special moments in your life, the turning points that changed the direction of your life in a significant way. Make a list of these moments, at least ten to twenty, and write down the significant event and when it occurred. Memoirists can feel overwhelmed by the large number of memories they have, so the turning point and timeline tools that I talk about in the book help to organize memories. We need to sift through to find the most important stories as a spine around which to build a longer work.

I also suggest that writers keep track of the “dark” and the “light” stories so they are not so overwhelmed by the more painful memories, and make sure they follow a “darker” story with a happy one that allows them to sink into the fullness of a delicious pleasant memory.

Learning about story structure and scenes is another way to contain and put in perspective the events of our lives. A story, unlike a journal entry, has a structure—a beginning, middle, and an end, and is constructed with a goal in mind and a plot with dramatic action.

When we write a scene, we find ourselves in the places and times of our lives in a kind of creative hypnosis. A story uses scenes to bring the past to life. A scene takes place at a particular moment in time, and draws upon the use of sensual details—smell, sound, texture, description, color, and taste, along with characters, dialogue, and action. In a story, we are both the narrator and the “I” of the story—the main character. This dual point of view helps to create a witnessing experience of ourselves as we write from our current point of view about who we once were, an artful weaving of then and now, past and present.

Alice Miller, a Swiss psychiatrist, said that being witnessed is a significant part of the healing process, and points out that while we need others to witness us and our stories, we can witness ourselves by becoming self-aware.
Writing allows us to witness the stages of our lives, and when we read others’ memoirs, we witness and empathize with them, thus deepening our connection with humanity and giving us new ways to think about our own lives.

If you have memories you don’t want to detail in your memoir, create distance. Write about what happened in the third person: “she” or “he” instead of “I.” Write as if you are watching the event unfold in a movie. Write a scene about a difficult incident, but make it turn out the way you wanted it to, ending it positively. Tell what happened before and after a difficult incident. Write around it, but not about the event itself. These techniques are protective–when you are ready to go deeper, you can do it later.

To tune into this powerful work, keep adding to your list of turning points. And remember this: the researchers that explored writing to heal found that writing happy stories was nearly as healing as writing about painful moments.
Remember that when you write your memoir, you are weaving a new tapestry of your life one story at a time.

One of the most important subjects that writers confront is to keep a balance when writing the darker stories that may arise while writing a memoir. In The Power of Memoir I discuss balancing the light and the dark stories and why this helps the writer and the reader. During my writer’s workshop at the National Association of Memoir Writers, we discuss how to keep writing when some of the true stories that need to be written bring us down, tempting us to lose perspective about our stories and ourselves.

Research has shown that writing positive stories about ourselves is as healing as writing about bad memories, but I’ve observed big changes when writers dig in the darkness for deeper levels of truth. We all want to avoid unnecessary pain, yet healing comes from balancing our system and not staying trapped in memories and negative feelings about the past. Our fears, anger, jealousy, insecurity, and hurt are real, but they can interfere with living with a sense of peace, forgiveness of self and others, and juicy creative energy.

Writer’s I’ve worked with find it helpful to weave back and forth between the dark and the lighter stories to create balance, and recover from the heaviness of writing painful stories. The path of emotional healing is like cleaning out an old wound: it hurts while we are cleaning it out but we feel better afterward.

Make a list of the dark topics that you suspect are important, but aren’t yet ready to write. List them by title or theme. Write down the age you were when these difficult times happened. Write down what you did to cope with the event at the time. How do you feel now about the incident? What would you have liked to happen differently? Place these stories on a timeline so you can get a perspective on the clustering of events.

Make a list of the light stories, stories that bring you a feeling of well being, happiness, contentment, and safety. They may include memories about love, spiritual experiences, and miracles. Stand fully in the light of the positive stories and feel them in your body. Hold the images of the positive stories while you consider the dark stories list. This technique helps to integrate the polarities of our psyche.

The reader needs relief too, as most readers will put a book down if there are uninterrupted dark stories. I alternated dark and light chapters in my memoir Don’t Call Me Mother so the reader could enjoy moments of lightness and joy while also learning about the story of abandonment that weaves through the book, and I brought the reader to an ending with forgiveness and healing.

The power of writing a memoir is that the truth really does make you free. You don’t have to share your story with anyone. Having the freedom to express yourself freely and fully can release you from the story you have lived, and allows you to move forward with grace and forgiveness. Keep writing!

The release of The Power of Memoir–How to Write Your Healing Story has given me the opportunity to answer questions about memoir writing, from truth to secrets, from families who support the writer to families who threaten to sue if the memoirist tells “the truth.” I’m posting some of the questions every few days to help memoir writers caught in the dilemma between truth, memoir, family, and fiction.

Many writers are torn between the desire to tell the truth and the internal/external pressure to keep family secrets. What do you recommend they do?
It’s important first for the writer to get her story on the page, to write her own truth. Each person has a point of view and his own story that no one else can tell, so he needs to claim it and discover its wisdom by writing about it. This process creates a new perspective that brings forth layers of memories and insights. Exposing these layers is part of the healing process.

And there’s the hot topic in all my workshops: secrets. Secrets are energy magnets. The force it takes to keep secrets hidden is energy that could be used for growth and creativity. So often though, the shame and guilt associated with secrets keep feeding the darkness and the fear. Secrets maintain a great power over us, and we are diminished by them. We become co-conspirators to family dynamics that we don’t agree with and want to break away from. So we get caught in a conflict—to speak or not to speak? Do we remain closed and complicit, or open up and take the risk of losing friends and family, of being ousted from the family, or shamed once again into submission? These are choices that we need to make consciously and with care.

I tell my students to be open to writing two versions of the story: first, write for yourself, to clear out your emotional closet and sort the events that are jumbled up in your mind. Research has shown that writing the unadorned truth is powerful and creates changes in the brain—in other words: it’s healing.

When you put real people in your book, especially if they are identifiable, they should be notified. Even if all the portraits are positive, we’re exposing a real person to the eyes of the world. The convention is to have people read the sections they appear in, if you are on speaking terms. If not, change the names and identifying characteristics, even if that means changing names for the character, the streets, town and anything that exposes them. If published, the legal branch of the publishing company can vet the manuscript as well, but since so many memoirs are self-published, I think it’s important for people to keep these ethics in mind.

Putting the publishing concerns aside for a moment, I think the writer first needs to listen to the voice within, the true author of the story–yourself. Write what you have to say as if no one will read it–you can review it later. You will be different from the writer who began the story. Writing the story will transform you, heal you, and give you a feeling of empowerment.
Be brave–write your story!

Poetry–so often this topic seems daunting. People whisper, “I’m no poet,” as they shrink from the subject. But on Friday, Mary Mackey, author of many award winning books, a memoir teacher, and a poet, regaled the National Association of Memoir Writers with her knowledge about poetry and creativity during our monthly teleseminar. She showed us how poetry can open the doors to our unconscious, invite new memories, and infuse our memoirs with the sensual details we need to create a good story.
I was enjoying this presentation so much because I began my own autobiographical journey by writing poetry, and produced a chapbook long ago called Songs of the Plains. Poetry allowed me to capture snippets of memory and snapshots of moments and landscapes when I was not ready to write the stories in prose.
She suggested that we view poetry as a brief and freeflowing way of opening the doors to memory and our memoir writing journey.
Mary showed us how three of her novels emerged from the raw material of one of her poems, and told us these tips:
1. Write in longhand, a direct link from the mind to the body.
2. Write quickly for twenty minutes without stopping. We enter a trancelike state that bypasses the inner critic.
3. Poetry gets us closer to the center of our creativity and stimulates the right brain.

Mary had much more to share, and the NAMW members that were on the line were mesmerized by her suggestions and even inspired to begin writing poetry. They can tune into the audio on our website to hear the whole teleseminar.
I agree with Mary–through my own experience writing poetry, reading to groups, and freeing my imagery
that my writing was enhanced by reading and writing poetry. I recommend that everyone try it!

Many of us have been pouring our hearts into journals all our lives, hoping to drop some of our burdens or at least vent enough to get on with things. Writing in a journal is a way to write whatever we want without worrying about making sense. Most of us don’t look at it again, shy to reread the scribblings of our former selves. Journal writing is helpful, but research has found that story writing helps to heal physically as well as emotionally, changing the immune system and altering neural pathways.

Writing a story has a different kind of power. A story has structure—a beginning, middle, and an end, and in a story, we use scenes and other writing techniques to bring the past to life: characters, dialogue, and action.

A scene takes place at a particular moment in time, and draws upon the use of sensual details—smell, sound, texture, description, color, taste. In a story, we are both the narrator and the “I” of the story—the main character. This dual point of view helps to create a witnessing experience of ourselves as we write from our current point of view about who we once were, an artful weaving of then and now, past and present. Alice Miller, a Swiss psychiatrist, says that being witnessed is a significant part of the healing process.

To start creating stories from your memories, list the ten most important events or turning points, moments that changed your life. Write each vignette one by one, focusing on your emotions and the meaning the story has for you. This will give you a good start to a memoir or life story. After you have several stories, you can quilt them together in whatever order you desire.

Dr. James Pennebaker, one of the premier researchers in the field of writing and healing, says, “Story is a way of knowledge.” This is a very exciting idea—to think of a story as having a life of its own, to imagine that a story can teach us something as we write it. I have discovered this to be true in my memoir writing and coaching. When memories are kindly invited to join us at the table, when we put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper, something interesting starts to happen: as we write, fresh and strange ideas meander onto the page, unexpected sentences arise out of us, thoughts and feelings that we hadn’t thought of in a long time. We wonder if we should delete these unexpected sentences, we may feel alarmed, ashamed, excited, even giddy. This is great! It means that you have allowed your true expression to come through. It means you burst out of your usual control, and allowed an inner wisdom to speak through you.

In my book I talk about the ways that memory is stored in the brain and explain how traumatic memories are stored differently. We might stay stuck in the trauma, even having flashbacks and feeling traumatized all over again as memories replay in our minds. Putting our experiences into a story—even a fictionalized story—helps us to reprocess our memories and frees us to move forward. Researchers found that the immune system is improved by writing for only 15 minutes four times a week.

As you write, it’s important to make sure you also capture the positive stories of your life, keeping a balance between dark stories and the lighter ones of happiness and joy. If you write only ten minutes a day, you can begin one of your vignettes, finding new meaning and appreciation for who you are and create new opportunities for a better future. It takes courage to write our truths, but the rewards are great. Begin today!

Tips for Writing to Heal
1. List 10-20 important turning points in your life. Create a timeline and plot these events on your timeline so you can see how the events cluster.
2. Choose one or two new turning point stories a week to write. Be sure to use sensual details and write scenes.
3. If you write a darker story, follow it up with a lighter one for balance.
4. Genealogical and historical research can help to create understanding and compassion for your ancestors. You can write from the point of view of your father, mother, or grandparents after you discover some of the details of their lives.
5. Write from old photos—describe the photo in detail, and then imagine what happened before and after the photo captured that moment in time.
6. Write freely—don’t listen to your inner critic.
7. Notice how you feel empowered as you claim your voice, your memories, and your past.