On vulnerability, success, failure, and hope

Let’s read that last part again. “Editors don’t want [and I add: readers don’t want] stories of our great triumphs or successes. Readers identify with failure and find hope in rising above mistakes.”

And then look at this again: “Everything pivots around our vulnerability” (Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk). How do you feel inside when you read those words?

My writer friend, Sharon Lippincott, author of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, says:

“Easier to say than do, but Amen to this. . . .

Be brave, y’all.

Write the real story.”

Sharon’s right. It’s painful to be vulnerable with our readers. It can be heart-rending to write about our shortcomings and failures.

In fact, it’s often even harder to re-live those experiences in order to write them.

But that’s where the gold is.

That’s where we discover

we’ve grown from the experience, we’ve matured,

we’ve become different, better people.

And that’s what readers want from you.

Memoir is all about transformation.

Write your stories.

You might inspire someone

who has also failed and longs to transform—

to hope that he, like you,

can grow and mature

and live as a different, better person.

What a privilege!

Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk have retired 

but you can still find them on Facebook.

You don’t need to be perfect to write a memoir, but you do need to be real

“Editors don’t want” [and I add: readers don’t want] “stories of our great triumphs or success. Readers identify with failure and find hope in rising above mistakes” (Cec and Me, with Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk).

You don’t need to be perfect to write a memoir.

But you do need to be real.

Readers want to identify with you.

They can do so if you’re willing

to be vulnerable—transparent—with them.

They read because they want to learn from you,

so write about your struggles, your flops, your fiascos.

Admit to your messes and debacles.

But don’t stop there!

Tell readers why and how you fought through your failures.

Tell them what kept you from giving up.

Tell them what gave you hope and resolve.

Tell them.

They need to know.

Why?

Because they want to grab hold of the same courage

and tenacity and faith and hope you chose.

They want to rise from the rubble like you did.

Write your stories!

Tell Me What He Did: A Memoir

My heart broke over the message Heather Marsten sent telling about enduring years of sexual assault and abuse. “Every morning without fail, after one of my father’s visits, my mom would say, ‘I heard him in your room last night. Tell me what he did.’ She wrote down the details, filling two notebooks….”

The title of Heather’s memoir, Tell Me What He Did, refers to two aspects of her abuse—that question her mother asked, and what He—God—did to rescue Heather from her abusive home.

Her healing was a long, meandering process. It included therapy, paganism, New Age practices, witchcraft, voodoo, Macumba, tarot and, she says, “ultimately real healing through Jesus.” Heather now says, “It was only when I discovered God that I was able to put the pieces of my life back together and walk forward in a joyous life.”

“Writing this book has been an adventure,” she says, “because God has been showing me where He was in the midst of all the chaos of my life. Some of the ways surprised me.” 

For example, Heather now sees that God was in the nots—those bad things that could have happened but did not. She says, “I did not get pregnant by my father, did not go insane, and did not get a communicable disease. At the time I saw God as a do-nothing, but in reality, He had put a hedge of protection around me.”

She sent us the following excerpt, giving a glimpse into her mother’s backstory. Heather was in third or fourth grade in this scene.

     Clotheslines crisscross our backyard. Mommy stretches and rubs her back. “Damn hot. Sheets should dry in no time. I’d sell my soul for an automatic washer and dryer.” 

      I hand Mommy a clothespin. “I like our wringer washer. We make a great team. You send the clothes through the wringer. I catch ’em.” 

      “Bet ya Hazel has one. Bastard takes better care of her than he does us.” 

      Shut up about Hazel. 

      After the sheets dry we make my bed. I point to a photograph hanging on my wall—a short-haired Indian princess wearing a fancy dress and a sparkly headband with a feather. “Who’s that?” 

      “Me in my favorite dress. Don’t I look good? Let’s get a drink to cool off. I’ll tell ya about it.” 

      I sip cherry Kool-Aid at the kitchen table. “Why does the dress have those hangy things?” 

      “Fringe. That fringe moved like wild when I danced. Maggie, a hoity-toity maid who worked down the block from me, wanted that dress too. I bought it. You shoulda seen her face when I wore it on my day off.” Mommy smiles and sips her orange juice. “Had this picture taken right after I got my Flapper haircut. Was all the rage. My parents said I was trashy to have my hair so short.” 

      “Flapper?” 

      “We called ourselves Flappers in the twenties. I was so good at dancing the Charleston. Here, let me show you.” She puts her cigarette in the ashtray and stands. She wiggles her hips as she walks forward and backwards, puts her hands on her knees and quickly moves her hands back and forth across her knees while her knees move in and out. “My fringe flied.” 

      “I saw someone dance like that in a movie.” 

      She sits. “Saved five months for that dress. Back in those days you only earned a few bucks a week. That’s the first new dress I ever had.” 

      “Your parents didn’t buy you new clothes?” 

      “There was twelve of us. Daddy was a coal miner. We were dirt poor. We used to run and meet him after the whistle blew. He saved crusts of bread from his sandwiches to give us kids as a treat. Couldn’t afford new clothes. All my dresses were passed down from my three older sisters.” 

      “Didn’t the kids in your class make fun of you?” 

      “No, we were all poor. ’Sides, I only went to school ’til eighth grade. My baby sister, Anna, was the only one to get new clothes and graduate high school.” 

      “You didn’t go to twelfth?” 

      “Nope. My parents needed money so they farmed me out as live-in housekeeper to a rich family in Chicago. Most of my money went home. With the little I could keep, I bought the dress.” 

      “That’s not fair.” 

      “Anna got everything. I got shit.” She sighs and sips her orange juice. “Still, I had fun. On my day off, my friend Betty and I went dancing. Those were some good times. Go play.” 

      I can’t imagine Mommy dancing and having fun. She never smiles.

Wow!

After you catch your breath, notice Heather’s writing—how she develops her mother’s personality and her own, sets the tone, includes details, writes tight (avoids wordiness), and creates curiosity for readers. Especially note how Heather writes dialogue. We don’t find even one “she said,” yet we all understand who is speaking. That’s impressive! Good job, Heather!

She is writing her memoir to encourage those who have endured abuse. In fact, even before publication, her story has brought help to others. God has lovely and powerful ways—even miraculous ways—of using our stories. I know He will continue to use Heather’s memoir to bring His healing to countless others.

Heather is a happily married mother with three young adult children. She and her husband are proud to witness their kids grow into compassionate, loving people venturing into the world.

A scene from her memoir-in-progress, Tell Me What He Did, appeared in Heavenly Company: Entertaining Angels Unaware, an anthology compiled by Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk.

Tuesday Tidbit: On vulnerability, success, failure, and hope

Let's read that last part again. "Editors don't want [and I add: readers don't want] stories of our great triumphs and success. Readers identify with failure and find hope in rising above mistakes."

Let's remember this while we write our memoirs.

Follow Cec and Me, with Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk, on Facebook. 

From settling old scores to singing new songs

“The memoir-crazed 1990s.” Do you remember that era?

William Zinsser (one of my favorite writing mentors) reminds us that, “Until that decade memoir writers drew a veil over their most shameful experiences and thoughts; certain civilities were still agreed on by society. Then talk shows came into their own and shame went out the window.”

It was an era, he says, when “no remembered episode was too squalid, no family too dysfunctional, to be trotted out for the titillation of the masses.”

Memoirists, like talk shows, disclosed shocking information, indulged in self-pity, and sought revenge from those who wronged them.

“Writing was out and whining was in,” says Zinsser.

But, he points out, those types of memoirs didn’t stand the test of time.

“The memoirs we do remember from the 1990s are … Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, and Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life.” (from “How To Write A Memoir” in The American Scholar; emphasis  mine)  

 “If these books by McCourt, Hamill, Karr, and Wolff represent the new memoir at its best, it’s because they were written with love. They elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness, arriving at a larger truth about families in various stages of brokenness. There’s no self-pity, no whining, no hunger for revenge…We are not victims, they want us to know.” (Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth; emphasis mine)

Their stories’ message: “We come from a tribe of fallible people and we have survived without resentment to get on with our lives.”

He counsels memoirists: “Don’t use your memoir to air old grievances and to settle old scores; get rid of that anger somewhere else.” (from “How To Write A Memoir” in The American Scholar; emphasis mine) 

That somewhere else could be a journal or a fictionalized version of the story. Or it could be in a first draft. Dr. Linda Joy Myers says, "Write your first draft as a healing draft. Get out what you need to say. Make it bold and real. Then stand back and think about how you want to revise it for publication." (from Will My Family Get Angry About My Memoir?; emphasis mine)

The important thing is to vent, to deal with the problem, to find healing and forgiveness and closure. Just don’t seek revenge in memoir.

There’s another reason to avoid seeking revenge in memoirs. Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk said well it on Facebook a few days ago: “Whenever I condemn others, I am condemning myself. Whenever I judge others, I give God permission to judge me.”

Jesus said it this way, “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged.  For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. And why worry about the speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?… Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye.…” (Matthew 7:1-5, NLT)

I suspect that’s what Thomas à Kempis had in mind when he wrote, “We are too quick to resent and feel what we suffer from others, but fail to consider how much others suffer from us. Whoever considers his own defects fully and honestly will find no reason to judge others harshly.”

Yep, nobody’s perfect. Each of us has failures and shortcomings.

So, have we asked God’s forgiveness? And then have we forgiven ourselves? (Read more at How do you deal with this elephant in the room?)

In writing our memoirs, let’s extend to others the same forgiveness, grace, and mercy God has extended to us. (Read more at How do you write about your family’s baggage?)   

Zinsser, with grace, encourages us to strive for the best goal: to do all we need to do to “elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness.”

And isn’t that what “singing a new song” is all about? (Psalm 40:1-3, Psalm 96:1, Psalm 149:1, Isaiah 42:10)

And why should we sing a new song? Because God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

And He says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

How can we not sing a new song in praise of the new things God has done in and for us? How can we not sing a new song after God has turned our harsh wilderness into a lush place?

Yes, sing a new song!

And isn’t that one of the most important elements of memoir? Memoir is about the old you and the new you, and how you got there, and what you learned along the way.

“The main character … —in a memoir it’s you!—is changed significantly by events, actions, decisions, and epiphanies,” writes Dr. Linda Joy Myers. “The growth and change of the main character is imperative in any story, and is the primary reason a memoir is written—to show the arc of character change from beginning to end.”

So, write about the old you, write about the new you, write about how you got there, and what you learned. 

Sing a new song. 

“Elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness.”

Related posts:

“Remembering only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete”

Does forgiving leave room for forgetting AND remembering?

Your memoir: sharing about sin and God’s forgiveness

The Four R’s of Memoir Writing, by Mary Gottschalk