What Is a Memoir? And Should You Write One? (Part 3)

Photo by Vadim Sherbakov on Unsplash

Memories of success and failure, loves lost and won, emotion and regret, life and death- they’re all floating around in your head like a million colored balloons, daring you to sit down, grab pen and paper, and tell the world about your life.

But like the traveler suddenly faced with 1000 different paths into a forest, you wonder which one to take. And it’s not like you’ve been here before; writing about your life in a meaningful and interesting way seems a challenge too great.

Yet here you are, and the forest isn’t getting any smaller- or you any younger.

First thing: Realize that each path will lead you through the woods and out the other side, but only if you follow it to its end. The trick is to persist, armed with the knowledge that whatever path you take is made up of trails that follow anything but a straight line.

• There’ll be side trips that wind around streams and large trees and hills.

• Caves that beckon you inside, until you realize they’re only distractions from your quest.

• Paths barely discernable amidst the undergrowth.

• Paths that totally disappear and leave you standing there, scratching your head as you look this way and that.

• And then you see the trail reappear and you’re on your way again.

Pick an event, a significant time in your life.

• Maybe the story is about how to you began a lifelong hobby collecting stamps.

• How about those first awkward encounters with Cupid’s arrow?

• Or that trip you took across three states for a new job, only to discover you’d been scammed?

• Or an illness that took you out of the game for much too long.

Regardless of what you choose to write about, it has to be an experience that resonates with you, to this day.

Something you look back on with longing or loathing.

Something that, for some reason, still bugs the hell out of you, or makes you glad to be alive.

Memoir expert Lisa Dale Norton calls these experiences shimmering images:

“A shimmering image is a memory that rises in your consciousness like a photograph pulsing with meaning… Each one of these moments resides whole in your mind… That’s why I say they shimmer. They have energy…”

1. Make a list of these events.

2. Pick one.

3. Sit at a table or desk.

4. Put that composition book in front of you.

5. Grab a pen.

6. At the top of the first page, write a title for this first event you’re going to write about. Then…

7. Start writing. Don’t worry about minor things like grammar or spelling; all those piddling things can be fixed later. Just write.

8. Keep writing.

9. Keep writing. And eventually the thoughts will slow down, then stop coming.

And you’re done.

10. Take a break, then choose another event from your list.

11. Write about it.

12. After you’ve spent a few days or weeks getting ten or fifteen of these remembrances recorded, print them out and see what you have. (And do not throw away those first drafts.)

13. Put the stories in some sort of order. And once that’s done, you’ll notice that some of these tales may need to be combined. If so, fold them into each other.

Finally, other shimmering images will come to mind; add them to your list and write about them.

As you’re doing all of this work- and it is work- understand that you’ve gone a long way toward making your life stories more readable, more interesting.

And always remember what your responsibility is as a writer:

Inform

Entertain

Uplift

Comments and questions are required welcomed. Ask me anything about memoirs, journaling or personal histories.