Back to basics: What is a Memoir?

 

If you’re thinking about writing a memoir, you need to know the definition of “memoir.”

 

And if you’re already writing your story, sometimes you need to remind yourself what a memoir is. This helps focus correctly and work efficiently.

 

A memoir is so much more than spinning yarns and telling tales.

 

Since there’s some confusion about the genre of memoir, let’s pin down what it is not: Memoir is not journaling. A journal is private—for your eyes only—but you write a memoir for others to read.

 

A memoir is not an autobiography. An autobiography documents your whole life beginning with the day you were born, but a memoir focuses on one segment of your life—(1) a specific theme or (2) a time period, a slice of life.

 

You can write a memoir based on a theme—for example, the theme of working as a seamstress in Asia, or a food vender at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, or a stepmother to six kids. 

 

Focus on only that theme, leaving out other topics—such as the fact that you might be friends with a famous movie producer, or that you worked at an animal shelter your first year after college.

 

Or you can write a memoir based on a time period. My first memoir, Grandma’s Letters from Africa, covers my first four years in Africa. My second memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir, focuses on three years in South America.

 

Another person’s time period might be his teenage years, or the years following a spouse’s death, or service in the Peace Corps. We focus only on that slice of our lives and leave out other topics.

 

We include only those details that pertain to our chosen window of time or our memoir’s theme.

 

Personal reflection is a key ingredient in memoir. Remember that. Most of us need to work on understanding what reflection is because, as Richard Foster observes, “The sad truth is that many authors simply have never learned to reflect substantively on anything.”

 

So, memoirists reflect in a deliberate way:

 

You look back,

peel away layers,

excavate,

find the gems.

Dig them out in pieces if you must, 

but dig them out.

Inspect.

Examine those gems,

ponder their deeper meaning.

Spend as much time as you need 

to make sense of what you discover.

Uncover the deeper, higher, wider, richer story.

 

In the past you might have overlooked something of the utmost importance, so make time to search for those profound lessons—insights, healing, blessings—in the events of your life.

 

In the process, you might need to do a “Doggie Head Tilt,” a phrase Michael Metzger coined. “If your head never tilts,” he says, “your mind never changes.” True!

 

In the process of reflecting, answer these questions:

• What new things have I learned about myself because of the key events of my life?
• What new things did I learn about significant people in my life? About God?
• How have these discoveries made me into a different, better person?

 

Not all memoirs include a spiritual dimension.

 

But if you are writing a spiritual memoir, keep this in mind: It does not require that you have exceptional, supernatural religious stories to write about, stories that would make the evening news and get tweeted around the world. Instead, look for ways God was involved in your everyday life.

 

You don’t have to write about God in every chapter. Whether you realized it at the time or not, He was with you, busy working out His good plans for His children—and from time to time in your stories you can spell out what He was doing. And do so in a winsome way, rather than sounding holier-than-thou.

 

Jesus said,

“Go tell your family everything God has done for you”

(Luke 8:39).

 

Write your memoirs!