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Abstract: There
is more to writing a memoir than compiling memories; they must impact on
our audience the way they impacted on us when we lived them or wrote them
down. But how to do that? I’ll discuss five ways to create universality
and interest in your writing so your audience will be drawn into your
story.
"For years I wondered if anything that
had happened to me would have broad appeal to readers. But now I realize
that everyone has a story. Nothing is significant until you make it
significant. It’s not what happens to you, but how you look at it."
- Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes
KEY 1: MEMOIR =
EVENTS + MEANING: KNOW WHAT
YOU’RE WRITING
Definitions:
Biography: A catalog of collected
facts, dates, etc. A laundry list, an itinerary. A bore.
Memoir: "His story," not "History": A
memoir transforms fragments of memory into what a life means. A
memoir results from the need to make sense of real experience,
painful or funny. A biography answers questions, a memoir asks them
(and sometimes answers them, too).
But most of all, a memoir makes you
examine, not just the life of the person you’re reading about, but your
own life.
KEY 2: TRUTH-TELLING:
EMOTIONAL VS. FACTUAL TRUTH
Ex: Read DWAC about when Dad comes over
to my house (p.45): "Seen through my eyes: the embarrassment, the
sudden insight into my father’s love for me, and his own weaknesses
and fears. It was a revelation—that’s what that scene is about,
not my embarrassment about getting caught partying."
Which facts? Don’t get it correct;
get it right!
Ex: Mom’s point that my book was
"Kenny’s truth."
Ex: Homer Hickam’s memoir Rocket
Boys: "I could have written much about my proud position as head
drummer in the school band. Had I chosen to write much about it,
though, it might have interfered with the main thread of the story,
which had nothing to do with high-school drumming."
Memory fails me. Don’t embellish or make
things up, but memory is variable. Ex: Sept. 11th: 70% of
people interviewed said they watched video of the first plane hit the
World Trade Center. There is no such video.
Be ruthless. If you feel the need to
sugarcoat a subject, write a hagiography (an idealizing or idolizing
biography). If they (or you) can’t stand the heat, don’t write it!
KEY 3: UNIVERSALITY:
WHY WOULD SOMEONE READ ABOUT ME?
Universality: We must see ourselves in
the story.
Ex: Parable of the Prodigal Son.
Ex: My book, where I’m the rebellious
son who arrives late for the "party" of understanding that my father
was really a great man.
Create universality with details
Small moments yield the greatest
insights. Ex: Me holding the piece of plywood.
Avoid the laundry list.
KEY 4: RESEARCH:
HOW TO DIG UP THAT BURIED TREASURE
Memory triggers: photo albums, music,
attics and basements, artifacts from your childhood on eBay, "timeline"
books and records, places.
Interview others, even if the story is
about you. James McBride (Color of Water) said he
interviewed over 100 people: "I sat down and talked to people, and I got
information from them that I didn’t necessarily remember that clearly."
Exercise: describe your childhood room.
Come on, you remember it. The curtains (mine had red and blue rocket
ships on them), the carpet (none), the desk (an L-shaped desk that my
brother and I shared), a glass display case Dad brought home from the
pharmacy, in which I placed my models), the bunk bed (me on top), the
shoebox taped to the wall were I kept my goodies: a thumb-sized model of
the Mercury spacecraft, a Gumby character, trading cards, and that green
springy-haired troll. My brother had pictures of the Beatles above his
bed. The battered dresser with the mirror on top that was too tall for
me to use. The drawer under the bunk bed that contained another
mattress, where friends who visited slept on, and in which we could put
a little kid on and still close the door, to hide (or punish). The
woodpile just outside the window and the scores of spiders it contained.
Write the senses: sight, sound, smell,
taste, touch.
KEY 5: THEME:
WHAT IS THIS ABOUT?
Not events. Just because something
happened is no reason to write about it. A memoir is not a journal; it
is not a autobiography.
Structure: It is a story, and all good
stories have three things in common:
Beginning: the set-up: hook the reader
early with a compelling event. Susan Rust begins her memoir about
breast cancer with a compelling passage about chemotherapy:
"I am afraid of chemo. I picture
being strapped into an electric chair and hooked up to an assortment
of machines that will do weird things to me. I’ll be radioactive,
glow in the dark. My hair will fall out instantly, my skin will turn
gray. I’ll look like the walking dead. Or maybe I’ll be too weak to
walk at all. The treatments will take days. It will hurt. My
outwardly healthy-looking body will deflate like a balloon with each
hit to my system, until I’m a shadow of my former self. My clothes
will hang on skin and bones. There will be dark rings around my
eyes, a shadowy pallor, a gaunt look about me. My kids won’t
recognize me. I won’t recognize myself. I won’t be able to
concentrate. Life will become a blur, one medical moment after
another."
Middle: rising action. Don’t be
afraid to shuffle the chronology. No law says the story must be told
in the order it happened. Characters must evolve and grow to maintain
our interest
End: resolution. "Class, what did we
learn from this story?" The protagonist of our story must change from
beginning to end. It ought to be a positive change, too. Even an
epiphany about how an abusive father can no longer hurt us can
suffice. Ex: Tobias Wolfe’s A Boy’s Life.
Theme is crucial. What is the meaning of
the story?
Ex: My father, while seeming to be a
rather boring, uninteresting person, was actually much, much more: a
great father and husband and a great human being. But my story isn’t
about his greatness—it’s about how his son discovers his
greatness, almost too late. That’s much more interesting
Metaphor: Adds richness and depth to your
story
Ex: The Color of Water uses
water imagery to show how skin color is meaningless when love enters
the room.
Ex: Angela’s Ashes is also about
water: the wet, musty poverty of Limerick, Ireland. The wetness of his
mother’s tears as she watches her alcoholic husband destroy his life
and theirs. The wetness of crossing the Atlantic to America, etc:
"He staggered to me and hugged me and
I smelled the drink I used to smell in America. My face was wet from
his tears and his spit and his snot and I was hungry and I didn’t
know what to say when he cried all over my head."
Ex: Dad Was A Carpenter uses
building and tool metaphors to show how a parent can shape a child’s
life, just like a carpenter shapes a piece of wood.
HOMEWORK:
READING LIST
Angela’s Ashes
by Frank McCourt
Tuesdays With Morrie
by Mitch Albom
The Color of Water
by James McBride
October Sky (Rocket Boys)
by Homer Hickam, Jr.
On Writing by
Stephen King
Adventures in the Screen Trade
by William Goldman
Dad Was A Carpenter
by Kenny Kemp
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