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!

Your stories can help others through the coronavirus pandemic

At a time like this, when people around the world are frightened and grieving over the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic, your stories can inspire courage. And tenacity. And faith. And hope. And practical, ingenious solutions in trying times—but only if you share your stories.

Below is an account I included in a collection of family stories for my grandkids, hoping it will help them somehow, somewhere, someday, in the same way my grandmother’s and mother’s stories helped me in an especially trying time.

“Mommy, tell us a story about the olden days!”

I wonder how many times my mother heard those excited words from my little brothers and me over the years. And she enjoyed telling us stories from her childhood. We loved sitting close to her and imagining scenes she created for us.

Many of her stories were from the 1930s, set in southeastern Ontario, Canada, in a farming area known as Glengarry County, the home of a number of Scotsmen and their families.

The Depression hit their lives very hard. Mom tells of having to wear shoes that were too small, shoes that left her feet disfigured. Grandpa worked the family farm and he also served as the postman, but still money was scarce. They raised chickens and cows and grew vegetables but sometimes their cupboards were nearly bare. I imagine that was especially true in winter months.

I also know that my grandparents knelt to pray every night before bed. I’m certain they prayed to God to keep their four daughters from going hungry during those lean years.

I remember one of my mother’s stories more vividly than others. She told about a time when their parents’ food supply had dwindled down to almost nothing, and they worried terribly. On one of those days, Grandma cooked a pot of soup for their family of six. I can picture her slicing up carrots and potatoes, and maybe an onion, maybe a piece of meat, or a soup bone. Maybe she put in dried beans, too.

Mom told us that the next day, all Grandma had for her family was that same soup but it wasn’t enough, so she added a carrot or two. The next day, the soup was still all they had so Grandma added a potato, or maybe an onion. This went on day after day and eventually Grandpa got a paycheck from the post office so they could buy groceries.

My mother must have thought of those days often when she was a young adult because sometimes our family had almost no food in our cupboards. Mom followed in her mother’s footsteps: She poured out her needs to God and she boiled a pot of soup. Each day she stretched it by adding an extra carrot or potato or onion, or maybe some of her canned tomatoes, while she told us the story of her mother stretching their soup in the same way back in the ’30s.

I grew up, married, and two years later had a baby, Matt. Twenty-two months later, our daughter Karen arrived more than a month early, unhealthy, and we ran up big medical bills. My husband, Dave, was a first-year teacher and our new health insurance wouldn’t cover Karen’s birth or extended hospital stay. 

In those days, 1971, Dave earned $7,200 a year, and we paid $90 a month for an old rental house. We had to be extremely frugal. I had one dress, one pair of jeans, one T-shirt, and I had scraped up enough money to buy turquoise polyester knit fabric to make myself a pants-suit.

We ate the cheapest food, never went to movies or restaurants, never spent money on hobbies. We bought only necessities, but money was still scarce.

In those days, we had no credit cards to see us through such times. Instead, we had to live within our means (which is not a bad thing; more people should try living that way).

In February, 1972, after we paid our bills on the first of the month, we had $28 left to buy food and everything else for the rest of the month. I was worried. I was stressed.

However, thanks to my mother’s story, I knew we could present our needs to God and that with His help we would make do with what we had, just like my mother and her mother before her. I assembled a big pot of soup: I had a soup bone with a little meat on it. I added carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and maybe some peas or corn. Each day for a week I thought of my dear grandma and my mother as I added a new ingredient—maybe rice or another potato or carrot.

And, indeed, we did make it through that week, and the rest of the month, until Dave got his paycheck the first of March.

God said,

“Be very careful never to forget

what you have seen the Lord do for you.

Don’t forget them as long as you live!

And be sure to tell your children and grandchildren.”

(Deuteronomy 4:9)

That’s what my grandmother and mother did!

My grandmother had shown her daughter, my mother, how to trust God and make the best of the resources He had given them. My mother remembered her mother’s example, trusted God, and made the pot of soup stretch, and, perhaps most importantly, she told me the story of how God provided for them. Because of that, I handled my own little family’s need for food in the same way they did—I trusted God and stretched our soup with the resources He provided. (From Come and Listen: Let Me Tell You What God Has Done for Me [Psalm 66:16] by Linda K. Thomas)

What stories can you write for your kids and grandkids about your grandparents battling on—not giving up—through heartbreaking times? How did God give them strength and courage to persevere?

What stories can you tell about your parents’ tenacity in confronting overwhelming challenges? What stories can you write about yourself when you were younger? What helped your parents and you trust God for what seemed impossible?

Did your great-grandparents live through the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918? How about the awful Great Depression? Do you know their stories?

What stories can you write for your family about World War I? Pearl Harbor? World War II? The Vietnam War? The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks—9/11? What was God’s role in the midst of those desperate times?

Your stories could make all the difference

in the way your family members tackle their own calamities.

Write your stories!

Family secrets and Michele Norris’s memoir: Not with anger, but with hope

Whether you know it, or like it, your family and its history played a role in making you the person you are today.

Even family secrets—secrets you could hardly envision—helped shape you. 

Imagine Michele Norris’s shock when she set out to write a book about racism in America and stumbled upon layers of family secrets that, in their keeping, had a profound influence on her childhood, the person she became, and the way she raised her children.

Nationally recognized Norris, journalist and former host of NPR’s All Things Considered, spoke at our local university’s dinner honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and legacy.

She learned from her uncle in 2008—years after her father’s death—that police officers shot her father during the ugly years leading up to the Civil Rights Act. Her father had never told her. 

After her uncle’s surprising disclosure, other relatives told more stories from that era, stories Norris had never heard.

That inspired her to research roles her family played, as a “non-confrontational family,” in America’s painful race-related issues. That investigation led to what she calls her “accidental family memoir,” The Grace of Silence.

She learned that the shooting occurred when her father, Belvin Norris, had just returned to Birmingham, Alabama, from World War II.

“He’d served in the Navy and he returned to a city full of Black veterans who had fought for democracy overseas and were eager to get a taste of it on their home turf. What they faced, instead, was a wall of white resistance. . . . They still faced old rules about segregation and carefully defined roles.”

In that era, too many Blacks were beaten, murdered, and denied voting rights.

Norris’s research revealed that only six days before her father’s shooting, another Black veteran, Isaac Woodard, still in uniform, was beaten and blinded by Batesburg, South Carolina, police.

“The story, subsequent trial, and swift acquittal of the officers caused a national sensation,” writes Norris in an NPR article.

“The Woodard case had a direct impact on President Harry Truman’s decision to integrate the military.”

The events of that period led Michele’s father to turn his back on the past, move north, raise his children in a white neighborhood, and keep earlier racial incidents a secret—even from his wife.

“Why would he hide it from his children?” asks Michele.

And why did her many relatives, all of whom knew the stories, keep them secret?

The questions haunted her.

“I’m pretty sure . . . that I would have ordered my steps in life differently had I known this,” Michelle says. “I might have been a different adult. I certainly would have been a different child.”

Over time, she came to understand that her father kept the secret “not with anger, but with hope.”

Her parents “wanted their children to soar, so they chose not to weigh down their pockets with personal tales of woe.”

“Our parents tell us what they think we need to know,” she continues, “and my father didn’t think I needed to know that. He wanted to make sure that my path forward was uncluttered by his pain, so he chose not to tell me about this. And that explains the title of the book . . . The Grace of Silence. That is the incredibly graceful act.”

“. . . I expect that the ones who came before us—

black and white—

had things they had to keep still about . . .

just like me and Miss Cora.

Things we had to do, whether we liked it or not.

And then we never speak of them again.”

(Augusta Trobaugh,

Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb, book description)

Do you know your parents’ stories?

Your grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ stories?

Probably some of your ancestors,

like Michele’s,

made hard decisions and sacrifices

to ensure that their pasts didn’t hold you back.

Their stories, their choices, and their secrets

have profoundly shaped who you are today.

Michele concludes with something for all of us, especially memoirists, to think about:

“History is made in all kinds of little ways,

a hiring decision, a school bus ride . . . .

I bet that some of the elders

who sit at your family table

might be sitting on stories of their own.

“Those stories, those individual stories

are so easily lost if we are not willing to . . .

listen to those who might be willing to share their legacy

if only someone is willing to take the time to ask.”

(Michele Norris)

“Hope is the answer” and you’re cleared to go

“During my intense grieving moments,” writes Dana Goodman, “other people’s stories gave me words to describe the ache that was indescribable. They gave me hope that a new day would dawn, and I would not be stuck in the black forever.”

Hope.

“Sharing hope truly is the heart of this writing business,” writes Mick Silva. “Words are like packaging. They’re pretty or flashy or sad or boring. And while everyone appreciates good packaging, ultimately it’s the hope inside them that matters…. We each have to ask…whether we want to share hope or not.”

Read that again. “We each have to ask…whether we want to share hope or not.” That zings, doesn’t it?

The Bible tells us to comfort others

with the comfort we’ve received from God.

(2 Corinthians 1:4)

Your memoir can do that.

That means writing your memoir is not a hobby, it’s a ministry.

Eugene Peterson suggests the church should ordain writers in the way they ordain pastors.

“There are never enough storytellers,” he says. “There are a lot of people who want to write stories but they don’t want to go through the discipline, the agony, the immersion in life it requires…. I think writing is one of the sacred callings. I wish, in fact, that the church would ordain writers the way they ordain pastors….”

Is that a new thought to you?

If so, make time to ask yourself these questions:

How different would your writing be if you viewed yourself as ordained to tell your story?

Can you—will you—consider yourself ordained to tell your story?

Let’s take a minute to ponder: What does it mean to be ordained?

It means to be approved, authorized, appointed, anointed, selected, and chosen.

It means to be commissioned, empowered, assigned, entrusted, and consecrated. And cleared to go.

Last Thursday I asked, “If your scars could talk, what stories would they tell?”

Have you thought about that question in the past few days?

Maybe something or someone maimed you, left you blemished, flawed, maybe even deformed—maybe in little ways, maybe in massive ways. Perhaps they left you broken, immobilized. Some scars are visible, some are hidden inside.

But remember: A scar is evidence of healing.

How did God transform your wounds into scars?

Who and what did God use to bring healing?

As a result of your experience, what hope can you pass on to others?

Are you now super-inspired to write your story? Please say Yes!

Believe God has

approved, authorized, appointed you.

He has anointed, selected, and chosen you.

Believe God has

commissioned, empowered, assigned you.

He has entrusted, and consecrated you

to carry out our key verses:

Always remember, and never forget,

what you’ve seen God do for you,

and be sure to tell your children and grandchildren.

Deuteronomy 4:9

Jesus said, “Go tell your family everything

God has done for you.”

Luke 8:39

Like Kellie McGann said, “Hope is the answer your readers are searching for…. Tell them they’re not alone in their dark night of the soul.”

“…Writing your story is the only way

to truly express what God did.

And you can’t believe just how remarkable he is

until you step back and see it for yourself.”

Mick Silva, Higher Purpose Writers

Your story can change a life.

Someone needs the hope you can offer.

So hear this:

You know what you’ve been commissioned to do,

and you—you—are cleared to go.

Tuesday Tidbit: On “careful and honest articulation” in writing your memoir

"Writing about the spiritual life

is like making prints from negatives....

Often it is the dark forest 

that makes us speak about the open field.

Frequently prison makes us think about freedom,

hunger helps us appreciate food,

and war gives us words for peace.

Not seldom are our visions of the future

born out of the sufferings of the present

and our hope for others out of our own despair.

Only few 'happy endings' make us happy,

but often someone's careful and honest articulation

of the ambiguities,

uncertainties,

and painful conditions of life

gives us new hope.

The paradox indeed is that

new life is born out of the pains of the old."

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

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. 

Tuesday Tidbit: Your memoir can minister to others

Here's your 15 seconds of inspiration,

your Tuesday Tidbit:

Avoid writing for revenge

We suffer pain for various reasons—sometimes we bring it on ourselves, sometimes it’s no one’s fault, but other times it’s the fault of another person.

If we’re writing a memoir that includes pain caused by a person or organization, we need to be cautious about our motives. And honest about our motives.

As a memoirist, avoid writing for these reasons:

• to get revenge, settle the score, retaliate,
• to humiliate a person or organization,
• to get readers to pity you,
• to get readers to take sides with you, or
• to indulge in self-pity.

Examine your heart and if you find even traces of wanting to write for any of those reasons, stop!  That’s not what memoir is about.

I have two pieces of advice: (1) Go ahead and write everything, but write for your eyes only.  Write about the injustices, write about your mistreatment, hurt feelings, anger, scars, and tears. Write about destroyed dreams, confusion, hopelessness.

Write it all. Write it as a prayer. Write until you know God has heard you. Write it as a way of asking God to help you forgive and move on.

Because such resolution usually takes time, set aside your private writing for a week or a month or a year. Listen for God, let Him work in your heart and mind.

Your goal is to move from anger to forgiveness, from pain to compassion.

Read William Zinsser’s important words:

“The marvel of Frank McCourt’s childhood is that he survived it…. The second marvel is that he was able to triumph over it in [his memoir] Angela’s Ashes, beating back the past with grace and humor and with the power of language. Those same qualities are at the heart of all the good memoirs of the 1990s….”

Zinsser mentions three such memoirs, A Drinking Life, by Pete Hamill, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, and This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff.

He continues, “Anyone might think the domestic chaos and alcoholism and violence that enveloped those writers when they were young would have long since hardened the heart…. Yet they look back with compassion…. These books…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; the authors are as honest about their young selves as they are about the sins of their elders. We are not victims, they want us to know…. We have endured to tell the story without judgment and to get on with our lives….”

Zinsser offers advice to today’s memoirists: “If you use memoir to look for your own humanity and the humanity of the people who crossed your life, however much pain they caused you, readers will connect with your journey. What they won’t connect with is whining. Dispose of that anger somewhere else. Get your intention clear before you start and tell your story with integrity.” (Writing About Your Life; emphasis mine)

When you can write that way—

when you can write with compassion 

and love and forgiveness, 

when you can write without self-pity or whining 

or revenge or being judgmental, 

 rewrite your rough draft. 

Strive to write like Frank McCourt: 

Write words full of grace, and maybe even a bit of humor.

This brings us to my other piece of advice: (2) Don’t let anyone read your manuscript until you have rewritten it.

Remember:

Your first draft was for you alone,

but later drafts are for your readers.

“Ursula K. Le Guin,

when dealing with painful subjects,

makes a distinction between ‘wallowing,’

which she says she writes but does not share publicly

and ‘bearing witness,’

which she does share.” 

(Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir; emphasis mine)

So rewrite. Rewrite with integrity. Delete the wallowing. Instead, bear witness. Write not as a wounded victim, but as one who has triumphed, as one who has forgiven, healed, and moved forward in a good way.

Related posts:

“To live the pain with hope”

Writing yourself to the other side of pain 

What is the point of writing about the hardships of life?

Writing yourself to the other side of pain, continued

Tuesday Tidbit: Writing yourself to the other side of pain, continued

We've received a number of responses to our July 14 blog post, Writing yourself to the other side of pain.

Last Thursday you read Catherine P. Downing's response, and today you'll read Barbara Thomas's response:

As I read your latest blog, I thought, "How did Linda know that I cried many times when I drafted Through the Outhouse Floor?" Writing it was reliving it and the final book told only about ten percent of the pain.  But you are right, writing does lance the festering wounds. And in retrospect, one can begin to perceive that the Lord is working out his plans.

Perhaps you also have shed tears and relived pain in the way Barbara has. I hope you've also experienced healing and insights into God working on your behalf.

Many thanks to both Catherine and Barbara for enriching and encouraging our own memoir writing.

And remember: 

Write your story as a prayer to God 

and He can use the process of writing 

to help you make sense of events 

that knocked the air out of you, 

left you broken, 

confused, 

weary, 

hopeless, 

maybe even paralyzed, 

and to work through your grief.  

Related posts: 
Writing yourself to the other side of pain   
What is the point of writing about the hardships of life?

What is the point of writing about the hardships of life?

“A recent blog on Spiritual Memoirs 101 dealt with the topic of writing through pain. I’m confident every reader snapped to full attention because each one of us could write volumes on pain, heartache and tribulation. Such is the path through a fallen world,” writes Catherine P. Downing, author of her new memoir, Sparks of Redemptive Grace.

Since we received several poignant responses

 from readers about that post, 

I invited Catherine to write a guest post 

for you today.  She continues:

In April I published my first book. It is indeed a spiritual memoir on suffering but, thankfully, it was crafted under the influence of the Holy Spirit and, unbeknownst to me as I wrote it, followed many of the principles Linda mentions in Spiritual Memoirs 101.

I get a sense of how relevant and meaningful my book is to readers by the growing number of people writing reviews. Their words cluster around three basic themes.

First, reviewers make note of the pain through words/phrases like “dark places,” “shattered dreams,” “heartache” and “grieving.”

Secondly, they express appreciation for the honesty: “transparent,” “intimate,” realistic” and “candor.”

The third theme I read in the reviews is one of hope—which is one of two objectives I had in writing the book. My purposes were: 1) to give hope and strengthen the faith of others walking a similar path, as well as 2) to help family and friends around them understand their struggles. 

Reviews like the following give me a glimpse of the hope and help people are finding as they read it: 

• “I was richly, deeply blessed and inspired by this book. But not inspired to smile and pour another cup of coffee. Inspired to love with greater fervor, to pray for eyes that see more clearly, and then to do something with what I see, because there are needs everywhere, there's brokenness everywhere.” –Amazon  
• “I read a lot of devotional books and commentaries on the Scriptures. I can't remember when an author has sorted out an issue or topic for me more powerfully than this one.” –Amazon
• “This little gem of a book has encouraged me to stop looking for the way OUT of difficult situations, and to look, instead, for the treasures waiting to be mined in the darkness.” –Amazon
• “In these few pages, Downing beautifully intertwines information with inspiration, and insight with encouragement, leaving the reader with a gut-wrenching hope and a hunger to know the God she does.” –Advanced Praise

How was the book able to capture the pain through the lens of transparency and hope? I don't have a formula, but here are some things that seemed to help. 

• It was written under a pseudonym. This was done to give a layer of privacy to our family, which in turn gave me courage to be vulnerable.
• Each chapter follows the same pattern: quote, narrative, scripture, prayer. This set a cadence to the reading.
• Each chapter is short, and I limited the number of chapters. This gives the reader space to breathe amid the heaviness. As one reviewer wrote in her advanced praise: “It only takes an hour to read ... but don’t rush it. Savor it. Meditate on it. Pray through it. And then share it with others.”
• Each chapter ends with a carefully penned prayer, which serves as a summary of the chapter. These highlight my recognition of my own limitations and confidence in our always-faithful God. People tell me the prayers are their favorite part. One reviewer mentioned on Amazon, "The prayers written at the end of each chapter are so well crafted that I will be using them to enhance my own prayer life and I will quote from them as I lead devotions on the related passages." 
• I was able to write this book at this stage of my life, and not earlier, because I have learned to be deliberate to tend to my own wounds. Though the painful life circumstances are current and real, I maintain an emotional, spiritual and mental regimen that enables me to reflect on our journey from a posture of health and hope, and not oozing from open sores.

The Spiritual Memoirs 101 blog points out that writing about our pain points can be cathartic. Readers likewise assume that writing the book was helpful to me in the healing process. For me the writing really didn't have that function. Our journey has been long and I've lamented the hardships and sorrows as they've happened; so for me there wasn't a bottled-up ocean of pain looking for a rocky shore where the waves could break. Instead it was more like cooking a Thanksgiving meal that was being prepared for the desperately hungry and offered as a ministry. 

In writing the book, my hope was that it would help others navigate through their own pain and show them how to build a lifeboat to carry them to a harbor of hope. Guiding thoughts were: 

How can I recount the moments 

when God's redemptive grace 

broke through the darkness 

so that in their own despair 

readers can see sparks of light? 

How might God bless and break 

the bread of our story 

to distribute it as nourishment 

to those who have lost sight 

of the Father's presence? 

In the end, I believe 

this is the point of writing 

about the hardships of life:

that while the story is about us, 

it is really about the readers; 

and while the focus is on our pain, 

it is really about the Healer. 

I'll close with this warning from the last chapter of my little book. I think it captures the biggest challenge in writing about our sufferings:

There is a cliff I walk along while trying to stay well away from the edge, and in writing these pages I have been very aware of its nearness. I have tried to stay on the narrow path between detached realism and narcissistic drama, for I know well that self-pity is a dangerous precipice and those who fall in often do not come back up.

As you consider being transparent about your experiences in your spiritual memoirs, may the One who turned water into wine take your pain and transform it into a balm to soothe others."


Catherine P. Downing
www.sparksofredemptivegrace.com
https://www.facebook.com/sparksofredemptivegrace
https://www.amazon.com/Sparks-Redemptive-Grace-Seeking-Illness/dp/057817717X


If you missed the recent blog post Catherine mentions, click on Writing yourself to the other side of pain.

Tuesday Tidbit: “To live the pain with hope”

Here’s your 15 seconds of inspiration, 

your Tuesday Tidbit:

“Often we discover the joy in the midst of the sorrow. 

I remember the most painful times of my life 

as times in which I became aware 

of a spiritual reality much larger than myself, 

a reality that allowed me to live the pain with hope. 

I dare even to say: 

‘My grief was the place where I found my joy.’” 

Henri Nouwen

In taking time to reflect on your life, have you, too, discovered joy in the midst of your sorrow?

Did God help you live with pain and hope at the same time?

Perhaps you, like Henri Nouwen, can say, “My grief was the place where I found my joy.”

Make time to think about Henri’s words 

and then write your story. 

Your story matters. 

Your words are important. 

Someone grieving needs to know your story 

and grasp hold of hope.