Back to Basics: Have you thought about writing an essay-type memoir?

 

The memoir you want to write will be packed with rich material for your family, friends, and maybe even strangers—after all, your story is important—

 

but to impact readers,

you must help them understand your story—

even  more than that,

you want them to enjoy and benefit from reading your story.

 

That’s why you need to structure—to arrange—your memoir carefully.

 

Richard Gilbert writes that memoirists must “focus not just on the story they want to tell but on how best to present it.”

 

Charlotte Rains Dixon explains the importance of structure this way:

 

“A piece of creative writing without structure

is like bread without yeast. Or a pen without ink.

Or coffee without caffeine in it.

 

“Picture a clothesline with a string between the two poles

all loose and wavy. No way can you hang clothes on it.

Now think of that same string as pulled taut,

and it accepts your shirts and shorts and underwear just fine.

Structure allows your [story’s] scenes

and characters and plot points to hang on.

Otherwise, they are just dangling in the wind.”

 

Last week we began looking at how to structure your memoir. (Click on Are you paralyzed by the thought of writing your memoir?) We looked at one option—arranging it chronologically.

 

But not all memoirists write their stories chronologically. Today let’s look at writing an essay-style memoir—a compilation of stand-alone essays.

 

For an essay-type memoir, you could use a poem to establish your structure.

 

While you read the poem below, notice: Each line could be a separate chapter in which you tell readers what you’ve experienced or what you’ve watched someone else do, and how you, the memoirist, changed as a result:

 

“If: A Father’s Advice to His Son”

 

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor living friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

(Rudyard Kipling)

 

A poem like Kipling’s could provide you with an effective framework—and result in a powerful memoir.

 

Here’s another idea for writing an essay-type memoir: Choose a Bible passage as your structure. For example, each of the Beatitudes could serve as the topic of one chapter:

 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

(Matthew 5:3-10)

 

Using each Beatitude as a chapter, you can write accounts that illustrate (a) what the Beatitude means and (b) how to live it out in everyday life—chapters about your own experience or about something you’ve witnessed in others.

 

For example, for the first Beatitude, define “blessed.” Explain what Jesus meant by “poor in spirit.” Then write about your own experience of living a poor-in-spirit life—or about someone else who lived such a life, a person who served as a role model for you.

 

Next, define what Jesus meant by “kingdom of heaven” and show what that looks like in the lives of those who are poor in spirit. And then, in good memoir form, conclude by explaining how living according to that verse shaped you into a different person.

 

And then begin writing about the second beatitude. If you continue writing, using the rest of those verses as chapter titles, you can write a whole memoir!

 

 

A good structure can be your friend, your helper.

 

It holds your story together.

 

And it helps readers embrace your messages and lessons.

 

Jon Franklin points out that your memoir, like all quality stories, can teach readers:  “. . . The deeper satisfaction comes when the reader learns with the character [that’s you, the writer]. The reader, like the character, thus becomes a better and wiser person.” (Writing for Story)

 

And that’s what you want, right?

 

Dedicate time to choosing a good structure for your memoir.

Your readers will thank you.

 

Share your memoir’s first seven sentences with us

Memoirist Kathy Pooler tagged me and several others on Facebook recently, inviting us to share the first seven sentences of our WIP (work in progress). That was fun!

Today we invite you to share your openings, as well.

But first, for inspiration, read four brief sample openings, below:  

Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue of Kathleen Pooler’s second memoir, Daring to Hope: A Mother’s Story of Healing from Cancer and Her Son’s Alcohol Addiction:

For as long as I can remember, it has always been my role to mother my children whether that meant jumping in to fix every little mishap or showing love for their hurts and boo-boos. Eventually as they grew up, I would need to learn to let go and let my children navigate their lives on their own.  

This has been by far, the hardest lesson for me as a parent to learn. As a mother of an addicted son, my understanding of mothering was fearfully tested. 

I always loved my son but hated what he was doing to himself with his drinking which time after time left him foundering and me wringing my hands in angst in an endless series of self-defeating activities.
          
When he was a toddler, I could just pick him up and remove him from a dangerous situation. I could protect him. But as he grew, he tested my limits. I could not have known that the seven-year-old who screamed, “Look Ma, no hands” at the top of the pine tree would one day as a young adult find himself stranded, homeless, jobless and utterly alone.

Below are the first few sentences of my soon-to-be-published memoir, working title Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go!

I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Roland, a seasoned bush aviator, as he piloted the custom twin-engine toward a Colombian airfield. I’d flown in our planes several times, but this was a first—watching the landing from the copilot’s seat. 

Dipping low, three or four seconds from touchdown, the wing on my side catapulted into the air and the plane veered to the left, lopsided and convulsing. Red lights flashed in the cockpit. A buzzer blared. Roland jerked levers and slapped switches and punched buttons.  

Please, God! I prayed, but I couldn’t say more—I couldn’t breathe. Of all the potential dangers I’d worried about for that trip—kidnapping, murder, and guerrilla activity aimed toward U.S. citizens—I’d never imagined a plane crash.

The next excerpt is from the beginning of Abigail Thomas’s A Three Dog Life: A Memoir:

This is the one thing that stays the same: my husband got hurt. Everything else changes. A grandson needs me and then he doesn’t. My children are close then one drifts away. I smoke and don’t smoke; I knit ponchos, then hats, shawls, hats again, stop knitting, start up again. The clock ticks, the seasons shift, the night sky rearranges itself, but my husband remains constant, his injuries are permanent. He grounds me. Rich is where I shine. I can count on myself with him.

And his is from the Prologue of Richard Gilbert’s Shepherd: A Memoir:

Childhood dreams cast long shadows into a life. As if the strong feelings they stir prove their validity, dreams propel the dreamer through an indifferent world. Which explains how I, a guy who grew up in a Florida beach town, find myself crouched beside a suffering sheep in an Appalachian pasture. 

“Richard, I think you should call the vent,” says my wife. Kathy and I flank the ewe’s prostrate body. 

Our third lambing has just begun this spring of 2001, and Red is in trouble. I’d found the little ewe in distress and had urged her up and nudged her inside an old shed, where she’d collapsed and resumed straining, panting as if in labor. But nothing happens; no lambs, hour after hour.

Okay, now it’s your turn! Post your first few sentences (up to ten sentences) below in the comments, or as a comment on SM 101’s Facebook Page, or in a private message.

The following posts will help you craft your memoir’s opening:

First lines    

Readers don’t want us to dilly dally around   

Openings: the hardest part