“The right words in the right order might be worth a thousand pictures”

 

“Words—especially religious words, words that have to do with the depth of things—get tired and stale the way people do,” writes Frederick Buechner. “Find new words or put old words together in combinations that make them heard as new, make you yourself new, and make you understand in new ways.” (From Now and Then; emphasis mine)

 

Think about it: Written words are merely scribbles and scratches on paper or black squiggles on a computer screen.

 

But words pack punch. They have power. Potential.

 

Words inspire, comfort, entertain, make the heart soar, cause laughter or tears. Words can change lives.

 

Words are a memoirist’s most important tools. We must use them with excellence.

 

Use crisp, bright, refreshing words—

 

but avoid ornamental words,

extravagant, snobbish words,

self-important words to impress readers,

elusive words that make your readers get up and find a dictionary.

 

A good thesaurus and dictionary can be a memoirist’s best friend. Computer programs usually have a thesaurus—a minimal one, but one that can help find a better word quickly.

 

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner,” writes Diane Setterfield. “Wind them around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”

 

James Michener writes, “I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

 

“The right words in the right order might be worth a thousand pictures,” says Roy Peter Clark in How to Write Short.

 

“Words whispered, shouted, and sung.

Words that move, dance,

and change in size and color.

Words that say,

‘Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me. . . .

The word has the power to create. . . .

When God says,

‘Let there be light’ (Genesis 1:30),

light is. . . .

It is this creative power of the word

we need to reclaim.”

Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey;

emphasis mine)

 

Look over your manuscript and replace boring, tired words with words that have zing and pizzazz and melody and texture.

 

“Writing is the painting of the voice.”

Voltaire

 

 

How can you retrieve your faded memories?

 

Writing your memoir can surprise you by bringing past events into a new light. As you make time to remember and ponder, new insights into old experiences will surface. Puzzle pieces will fall into place.

 

Frederick Buechner explains what he discovered when he penned his personal stories in The Sacred Journey and Now and Then.

"They gave me more of a sense than I had ever had before of how as far back as I could remember things had been stirring in my life that I was all but totally unaware of at the time.

"If anybody had predicted when I was an undergraduate at Princeton that I was going to be ordained as a minister ten years after graduation, I think I would have been flabbergasted.

"Yet as I wrote . . . I found myself remembering small events as far back as early childhood which were even then leading me in something like a direction but so subtly and almost imperceptibly that it wasn't until decades had passed that I saw them for what they were. . . .

"The events were often so small that I was surprised to remember them, yet they turned out to have been road markers on a journey I didn't even know I was taking.

"The people involved in them were often people I had never thought of as having played particularly significant roles in my life yet looking back at them I saw that, for me, they had been life-givers, saints." (Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Telling Secrets)

God longs for us to remember what He has done (Psalm 105:5), but we so easily forget!

 

Memories are vital components of memoirs, so how can we retrieve the faded ones?

 

If you kept a journal in the past, you have a treasure. It will be packed with events and details and personal insights that you might have forgotten over the years.

 

Old letters—that you wrote or received—can also help remember significant events and people.

 

Look through your Bible, devotionals, or Bible study materials. If you’re like me, you’ve jotted memories and dates in the margins.

 

Some people print and save special emails they’ve sent or received.

 

Here’s another idea to help you retrieve your memories of a key place: Sketch a floor plan and/or the neighborhood. Maybe you’re writing about your childhood home or about Boy Scout camp. Or maybe you’re writing about an office building in a bustling city. Sketching that place will help remember details.

 

While you draw, memories will bubble up and percolate.

 

Don’t believe me? Give it a try! As you sketch, jot down notes about who was with you and what significant events took place there.

 

But that’s just the beginning!

 

Memoirists go beyond remembering the past. Memoirists search for significance. Relevance.

 

Pondering, unraveling, piecing together, reflecting—all are necessary ingredients in memoirs. Tell readers what you now see, in retrospect. Look for deeper meanings and connections, as Frederick Buechner did, above.

 

Looking back, what did you learn about yourself?

 

What patterns did you discover that you hadn’t noticed before?

 

How did the place and people shape your life? And prepare you for your future?

 

Maybe, like Buechner, you'll notice that you'd been on a journey you didn't even realize you were taking.

What was God doing? What did you learn about Him? Like Frederick Buechner, did you discover God’s purpose for your life?

 

When you pull your memories out of hibernation, give yourself plenty of time to examine them and answer the above questions.

 

Look for relevance you might have missed in the past.

Search for profound lessons you learned.

Notice defining moments and turning points.

Make time to discover insights.

Identify healing and blessings that were there all along.

Uncover your richer, higher, deeper, wider story.

And then share it with others.

Covid-19 and those “Beneath life’s crushing load”

 

Tragedies caused by Covid-19 can certainly be called one of life’s crushing loads. As of this morning, more than 1,700,000 people have died around the world. I estimate that for each one, at least fifty family members and friends are grieving. That number comes to 85,000,000 people mourning those deaths. That’s probably a low figure, and it will continue to grow.

 

Add to that financial disasters to businesses and employees, the enormous emotional and physical toll on first responders and healthcare workers, and people being evicted from their homes.

 

Add to that the isolation so many are experiencing from families at Thanksgiving and Christmas, teachers exhausted as they teach online instead of in person, and students struggling to keep up with their lessons.

 

Add to that careworn parents trying to work from home and supervise kids and help them with their schoolwork—all at the same time. Families are struggling financially because breadwinners have lost their jobs. Thousands every day wait in line for food. Others have enormous medical bills. Those recovering from the virus can have long-term health issues, making it difficult for them to get back on their feet.

 

And doctors and scientists are concerned over a sometimes-deadly syndrome related to Covid-19 which effects children’s “heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys, digestive system, brain, skin or eyes.”

 

Now there’s news that the coronavirus has mutated in England, and probably has reached other nations as well, and that the new strain spreads much more quickly than we’ve seen so far.

 

And that just scratches the surface when it comes to Covid-19.

 

In addition, in recent months our nation has experienced political unrest, violence in streets, racial tensions, and significant disagreements among Christian denominations.

 

That’s a lot of heartache to bear.

 

And I’m sure you’ll agree: All of this has added an element of sadness to this Christmas season.

 

In my family, we have our own layers of sadness, but really: We have little to complain about compared to millions of families that have many more problems than we do.

 

I ran across this artwork (see photo below) in an antique Christmas book and its caption took my breath away. “Ye, beneath life’s crushing load,” words from the beloved song, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

 

The words are so familiar to me—I’ve sung the song for as long as I can remember.

 

But this year, those words take on deeper meaning. I’m glad they caught my attention and jostled my heart and made me care more deeply.

 

Sometimes we want to block out the grimness of a time like this—we desperately want to ease our pain. We grab hold of distractions like Christmas parties and movies and music and decorations and gift-giving.

 

And yet, it’s good to step aside from our giddy Christmas festivities to pray for those suffering around us, in our nation, and around the world—those staggering beneath life’s crushing load.

 

But let’s go beyond that—let’s remember the suffering and sadness we have experienced in the past, and let’s remember the ways God stuck with us and got us through to the other side of the pain.

 

Remember the people He used, the Bible verses, the sermons, the stories He used to minister to us and keep us from going under.

 

Let’s always remember the good God brought to us within our past heartaches and sufferings. And then let’s comfort others with the comfort He has given us (1 Corinthians 1:3-4). How? By telling them our stories.

 

“Listen to your life,” wrote Frederick Buechner. “See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and  hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then)

 

Marlene Bagnull wrote, “I discovered the answers he [God] had given me could be a source of help and reassurance to others who asked . . . ‘How Much Longer, Lord?’ . . . I sensed the most difficult things for me to share could be the very words someone else needed to read.” (Marlene Bagnull, Write His Answer)

 

Which people did God use to comfort you when you were staggering beneath life’s crushing load? Thank God for them, (and thank them, too, if you can). Then pass it on: Share your stories with others.

 

Search your mind and heart for stories you need to include in your memoir, stories that will bless and encourage readers.

 

You don’t know what’s in the future—you can’t know now what will be happening in the lives of your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, and all the others who will someday read your memoir.

 

Right now you can’t know what crushing loads your readers will be carrying.

 

But this is what you can do right now: Ask God to help you remember the good He brought out of your past heartaches and disasters. Dig deeply, layer by layer, and find the gems. Connect the dots.

 

Spend time recalling specifics of your situation,

Bible verses that made a difference,

God’s answer to prayers,

and people who loved you and stuck by your side.

 

And then, ask God to help you write your stories.

Ask Him to use them to give others

courage and hope and faith,

stories that will help them persevere

beneath life’s crushing load.

 

Writing your memoir: “A lump in the throat and a deep, wordless feeling”

Prolific writer Frederick Buechner says that when he writes books, they “start—as Robert Frost said his poems did—with a lump in the throat . . . with a deep, wordless feeling for some aspect of my own experience that has moved me.” (Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation)

Do you know that “deep, wordless feeling” that longs to find its way from within you and into black and white on paper?

If so, you’ll find encouragement and inspiration from Donald Murray’s words in The Craft of Revision:

If you haven’t yet begun to write your memoir,

begin today!

Write so you can discover what you want to say,

and then rewrite to make sense of that

“deep, wordless feeling,”

and share your story with others.

Are your memoir’s main characters real enough?

As a reader, you know what it’s like to give up on a book, right?

In one way or another, the author failed to interest you in his story and you aren't willing to waste more time on it. You close the book, toss it in the car, and return it to the library.

Here's the point: We can't force people to read our memoirs.

Like dear Cecil Murphey says, "We have to persuade people to read us and assure them that the time they spend with us will be rewarding."

One way to write a user-friendly memoir is to create realistic main characters.

Think about one of your main characters. Have you included significant physical features and mannerisms?

Include sensory details—details pertaining to the five senses: What was it like to touch, smell, taste, hear, and see him or her?

Today I offer you charming, intriguing examples of details describing people. Settle in, enjoy these jewels, and learn from them. 

The first is an excerpt from Gordon Braun's soon-to-be-published memoir, Paperboy: Dispatches From A Town That Isn't Even A Town. Here, Gorden, age twelve and starting a new job as a paperboy, is impressed with an older boy and his responsibilities:

Finally it’s my turn to get my papers from Mike, the shack manager, a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Shoreline High School with a paper route of his own, a key to the padlock of the shack door and the additional responsibility of carefully counting out and recording the number of papers given to each boy. Mike is a red-headed, gap-toothed, cheerful type who reminds me of a cross between Howdy Doody and a sincere version of wise-cracking Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine. 

“Hi Gordon, how many today?” he asks. I like that he knows my name. In fact, he knows everyone’s name and everyone likes that about him.

This next example is also from Gordon’s memoir:

Jan . . . is one of Mom’s best friends. She used to live next door but still comes by for frequent visits. A short, stout woman, Jan is a devout Catholic with a generous heart and an infectious laugh. As the two of them sit at the dining room table drinking Folgers coffee and smoking cigarettes, Mom’s friend entertains us all as she tells stories about being marooned in France by the stock market crash while visiting her wicked aunt in 1929. Or about salmon fishing with her husband Burt off the Washington coast near Westport. Or her bowling league at the Polynesian-themed Leilani Lanes. Or her children and their piece-of-work Boston Terrier named Barney. Or about Rusty and Lori, the two women who own the dry-cleaning business where she runs a steam press and who live together under suspicious circumstances. 

She smokes unfiltered Pall Malls out of a red pack while Mom smokes filtered Tareytons as they share their time together. There’s something appealing about the way Jan tamps down the tobacco by repeatedly tapping the cigarette against her left wrist before she lights up. Every now and then she’ll stop talking and tilt her head back to delicately remove a bit of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. In these brief instances she looks wistful to me. But I’m twelve, so what do I know? The interlude is momentary and easy to miss because she’s promptly on to another story. (Gordon Braun, Paperboy: Dispatches From a Town That Isn’t Even a Town)

Here's an excerpt from Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking: “The faraway look in his eyes is partly the beer and partly that he’s really far away.”

Here’s another from Frederick Buechner’s Now and Then:

He [James Muilenberg] was an angular man with thinning white hair, staring eyes, and a nose and chin which at times seemed so close to touching that they gave him the face of a good witch. In his introductory Old Testament course, the largest lecture hall that Union had was always packed to hear him. Students brought friends. Friends brought friends. People stood in the back when the chairs ran out. Up and down the whole length of the aisle he would stride as he chanted the war songs, the taunt songs, the dirges of ancient Israel. With his body stiff, his knees bent, his arms scarecrowed far to either side, he never merely taught the Old Testament but was the Old Testament. He would be Adam, wide-eyed and halting as he named the beasts—“You are . . . an elephant . . . a butterfly . . . an ostrich!”—or Eve, trembling and afraid in the garden of her lost innocence, would be David sobbing his great lament as the death of Saul and Jonathan, would be Moses coming down from Sinai. His face uptilted and his eyes aghast, he would be Yahweh himself, creating the heavens and the earth, and then he called out, “Let there be light.” There is no way of putting it other than to say that there would be light, great floods of it reflected in the hundreds of faces watching him in that enormous room. (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then)

And Rachel Hanel writes: “Susan Orlean’s description of John Laroche is one of the most perfect descriptions ever written: ‘John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.’”

Describe your memoir’s main characters

so that readers can visualize them,

as if they were with you and that person.

Revise and polish your memoir in those places

where your main characters need to come to life.

Tuesday Tidbit: “A lump in the throat and a deep, wordless feeling”

Frederick Buechner says that when he writes books, they “start—as Robert Frost said his poems did—with a lump in the throat . . . with a deep, wordless feeling for some aspect of my own experience that has moved me.” (from Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation)

Do you know that “deep, wordless feeling” that longs to find its way from inside you and into black and white on paper?

If so, you’ll find encouragement and inspiration from Donald Murray’s words in The Craft of Revision:

Begin! 

Write so you can discover what you want to say, 

and then rewrite to make sense 

of that “deep wordless feeling” 

and share your story with others.