Back to Basics: WHEN to write the seared, charred, blistered parts

 

Not all memoirs involve deeply sad experiences. Some are humorous, many are tender. Some are full of adventure.

 

Others, though, include traumatic incidents.

 

And so, today, we’ll look at writing a memoir that includes seared, charred, blistering parts.

 

I’ve seen something happen too often and saw it again when my friend began composing his memoir by writing about the most disturbing year of his life. Wow!

 

When memoirists start by writing the super-painful stuff, too often they become overwhelmed all over again with the devastation they endured—and soon they give up altogether.

 

Don’t let that happen to you.

 

A word of caution:

Re-living and writing about past traumas

can cause PTSD.

Consider seeing a good therapist (not all are good!)

before and during your writing.

 

Begin by composing your easy segments—not the harrowing ones. Write the funny incidents, the fascinating experiences, the happy vignettes. That way you can ease your way into both writing and doing the reflecting that memoir entails.

 

Jot down thoughts, reactions, questions, memories, conversations. Create descriptions of key people (click on “No cardboard characters!”) and of main places in your story (click on “The importance of 'place' in your memoir”). Before long, you’ll be assembling a rough draft of your memoir.

 

You don’t have to craft your chapters/vignettes

in the same order they’ll appear

in your completed memoir.

Write them in any order that’s easiest for you.

Later you can organize them in the best way.

 

My heart wants you to fall in love with:

• pondering,
• and discovering the good stuff you overlooked in the past,
• and making sense of what used to mystify you,
• and discovering how far you’ve come,
• and choosing just the right words,
• and fashioning your memoir as a gift for yourself and for others.

 

For now, give yourself permission to begin with uncomplicated parts of your stories. Tackle the hard ones later.

 

And here’s something interesting: Even if you’re not physically putting your aching, tender, throbbing accounts into words (with pen and ink or on a computer screen), you are working on the story. I can’t explain how that works but, behind the scenes, your heart and brain are working on how to write the troubling stuff.

 

Be encouraged by what memoirist Kathleen Pooler said about writing her two memoirs:

 

“When I first started writing out my stories, facing painful memories was difficult. As I kept writing, new insights revealed themselves to me . . . just through the process of facing them and writing about them. I experienced healing through reading my own words and began to feel I was on the other side of pain.”  (Kathleen Pooler, author of Ever Faithful to His Lead and Just the Way He Walked)

 

If you’re not ready to write, let your heart and mind rest for a few weeks or months—or however long it takes. Pour out your heart to God. Wait patiently before Him, putting your hope in Him (Psalm 62:5-6).

 

He bends down and listens to you. He hears and answers (Psalm 116:1-2).

 

Stay alert. One day you’ll be vacuuming the car, or playing catch with your grandson, or folding laundry, and you’ll have one of those A-ha! moments.

 

Or maybe you’ll hear a song, or someone else’s story, or a Bible verse, or a poem and, out of the blue, God speaks, or maybe nudges, offering you insight and clarity about your hurtful experiences.

 

When that happens, listen. Jot down notes to yourself. You’ll be mining treasures. Later you can use your notes to add to your rough draft.

 

Speaking of your rough draft:

It is for your eyes only.

 

Because of that, you can write it all—the seared, charred, blistered parts, the questions you never had the courage to ask aloud, the doubts you kept secret, the anger you kept bottled up.

 

You will revise your memoir

numerous times before you publish it

so keep this in mind:

You can always delete, or revise,

the bleeding, raw portions of your first draft.

 

For now, just wrestle them into writing, for your own sake. (Review last week’s post about using method writing, a creative, helpful way to recall situations, and then to write about them.)

 

Invite God to sit close beside you. He wants to help you remember, maybe to see things differently, to notice the ways He helped in the past and continues to help you day by day, year by year. He wants you to see there’s a good place for you on this side of your pain.

 

My heart longs for you to experience that “He heals the  brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)