Check out Experience Tells, memoir vignettes published in an ezine

Today we welcome guest blogger 

and my dear friend, Joyce Hyde, 

who, along with two friends, publishes memoir vignettes 

in an online magazine—or ezine. 

And what a coincidence: The ladies chose the same theme verse 

as ours here at SM 101, Deuteronomy 4:9!

Perhaps you’d like to choose this format 

for your stories, too. 

Check out Joyce’s post here and the ezine, 

Experience Tells. 

They will inspire you!

Welcome to SM 101, Joyce! Take it away!

For several years Carol Brinneman, Kristin Elkinton, and I worked closely together at a nonprofit to produce print and web communications. Carol is a highly qualified editor and writer. Kristin is a writer, and was, for many years, the manager of the department where I worked. I had written in the past, but in recent years I focused on graphic design using Adobe products such as Photoshop and InDesign.

We became friends and have much in common. We are Christians and have been missionaries most of our adult lives. We’ve all traveled a great deal and lived cross-culturally. Each of us has endured difficult times in our childhoods and adult lives as well.

In May 2015, I retired because my husband, for health reasons, needed me at home full time. Kristin had retired a few years earlier, but Carol was still working, though not full time.

We met for lunch, as we had done several times before, but this time the atmosphere was different. I don’t remember who brought the idea up first, but we started talking about wanting to do more with our lives. We all felt our calling from God was not over when our assignments ended, and we were not ready yet for a rocking chair on the porch!

The more we talked, the more the idea jelled that we should do something with the gifts God had given us. We had stories to tell of God’s blessing, correction, and provision. We felt we had survived it all and been privileged in the lives we’d led. Now we were concerned mothers and grandmothers who wanted to see our children, extended family, and friends thrive—in life and in a relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The timing was perfect. Adobe had just come out with Publish Online. This app allowed us to publish from Adobe InDesign and upload to the web at no cost. I told Carol and Kristin about this new possibility. We realized we had the platform, and the ability to do the magazine, but should we?

We went home and prayed, making sure this was something God wanted us to do. It was a huge commitment to publish a magazine regularly. We wanted to do an excellent job, and that takes lots of time. We met again and decided to go ahead, starting with the 2015 Christmas issue. We have now published six editions of our ezine, Experience Tells.

We chose as our theme verse Deuteronomy 4:9, “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” We hope we are accomplishing this goal with each issue.

I believe everything came together for us to start the magazine: timing, personnel, gifting, and desire. We have no idea how long we will continue, but when the time comes to stop, we will be grateful for the blessing of doing this together as friends.

All issues are on our Experience Tells website. Please visit our Facebook page, too, and like us.

Joyce and I and our husbands worked together 

for several years in Nairobi 

and explored the beauties of Kenya on our weekends. 

I can’t imagine living there without Joyce and Marvin—

our memories are indelible. 

Read about them in my memoir, 

Grandma’s Letters from Africa.

Tuesday Tidbit: Reflection—it’s a must

“… Memoirs are much more than memories put to paper…. 

Memoirs are comprised of two important elements: 

scene (narrative) and reflection. 

Without reflection, you do not have a memoir—

you have a vignette or series of vignettes 

that describes events, 

but does not imbue the events with meaning and relevance. 

Meaning and relevance come from reflection.”

Amber Lea Starfire

An easy way to add richness to your memoir's stories

Consider placing epigrams at the beginning of your memoir’s chapters or vignettes. (Usually an epigram is centered under the chapter title or number.)

An epigram is a concise saying that:

shines light on,

or summarizes,

clarifies,

focuses,

adds pizzazz or sparkle,

or enriches the important story that follows it.

An epigram can be a short poem, song lyrics, a proverb, adage, or something witty.

It can be a quotation, a Bible verse, a maxim, a pithy statement, or a prayer.

If you’re like me, you’ve saved poems and quotations—in journals, in filing cabinets, in computer documents. If you’re like me, you’ve underlined book passages, highlighted Bible verses, and memorized song lyrics.

They caught your attention for some reason. They have special meaning for you. Why?

Take time to think: What happened in your past that makes that passage poignant?  What experience—what wisdom, what life-shaping event, what joy, healing, hope, what delight—does each saying point to?

If a brief quotation has a special meaning to you, you could—and probably should—write a story about it.

What about those other quotations that resonate with you? Consider writing some or all of the stories those sayings bring to mind, and place the epigram at the beginning of the story.

I gave you a long list of quotes last summer, and today I’m giving you more which might work as epigrams for your vignettes. I hope they will get your mind to humming on new story ideas:

“God gave us memories so we could have roses in winter and mothers forever.” J. M. Barrie

“In the life of a God-centered person, sorrow and joy can exist together. That isn't easy to understand, but when we think about some of our deepest life experiences . . . great sorrow and great joy are often seen to be parts of the same experience. ” Henri Nouwen

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” Dr. Seuss

“Don’t go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think of us.… I am the beloved child of a loving Creator. ” Henri Nouwen

“To be loved but not known is superficial. To be known and not loved is our great fear—but to be known and loved, that transforms you.” Tim Keller 

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” Harper Lee’s character Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; … who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” Theodore Roosevelt

 “Sometimes God allows something in your life that only He can fix so that you will get to see Him fix it.” Tony Evans

“Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’ ‘That’s the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.” George R. R. Martin

“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”  M. Scott Peck

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.” Mother Teresa

“The greatest contribution to the kingdom of God may not be something you do but someone you raise.” Adam Stanley

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.” Pearl S. Buck

“I’ve learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.” Charles Spurgeon

“A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear.” Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.” Mitch Albom

“When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. ” Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” C.S. Lewis

“ … At moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks.… He speaks not just through the sounds we hear, of course, but through events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens.” Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

“Sometimes life takes us places we never expected to go.  And in those places God writes a story we never thought would be ours.” Renee Swope

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” Dante

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.” Proverbs 31:8

Related post: Add richness to your memoir’s chapters

Structuring your memoir: Are your vignettes defying you to organize them?

“Now comes the hard part: how to organize the … thing,” says William Zinsser.

Perhaps that’s where you find yourself today, wondering how to structure—how to arrange—your vignettes into a pleasing order.

Vignettes: Assorted memories written as stand-alone accounts. Essays, each related to your memoir’s theme .

When structured well, your collection of vignettes will tell a complete and satisfying story.

“Most people embarking upon a memoir,” Zinsser continues, “are paralyzed by the size of the task. What to put in? What to leave out? Where to start? Where to stop? How to shape the story? The past looms over them in a thousand fragments, defying them to impose on it some kind of order. Because of that anxiety, many memoirs linger for years half written, or never written at all.” (William Zinsser, How to Write a Memoir; emphasis mine)

Zinsser nailed it. My pile of vignettes has been lingering for too many years. Recently I’ve worked on several old pieces, revising, polishing, and trying to organize them, but stringing them together—finding just the right arrangement for them—is puzzling. Zinsser nailed it again: So far, my vignettes are defying me to impose on them some kind of order. How about you?

Let’s take a closer look at structuring. (Don’t miss Your memoir’s structure: think of it as your helper.)

Structuring is creating a framework for telling your story so it will have maximum impact on your readers.

"Structure is a selection of events from the character's life stories that is composed into a strategic sequence to arouse specific emotions and to express a specific view of life." (Robert McKee, Story; emphasis mine)

Finding that strategic sequence—that’s my quest. Yours too.

OK then, what are your choices for assembling your vignettes into a strategic sequence?

Perhaps the most obvious choice would be arranging them chronologically. See my previous blog post, “Where are you from” and your memoir’s structure.

Assembling your vignettes chronologically, however, might not be the best way to tell your story. For example, you could organize them by themes. If you choose a non-chronological structure, be sure to read Your personal timeline will help your memoir’s readers.

I found a helpful blog post written by PJ Reece entitled How to Create a Story Structure to Die For.

PJ writes fiction and screenplays, but her technique works for memoir, too. Jon Franklin presents a similar structure idea in Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner.

Over the past twenty years, PJ has discovered that “a conventional story is actually Two Stories. In the gap between the two lies the Heart of the Story.” And “in that dark heart of the story, the hero will experience a death.”

“Death” can be defined in various ways: failure, despair, loss, disappointment, betrayal, or an obstacle, among others. “…Failure and disappointment are integral” to stories, PJ says. “Loss and disenchantment are central to a good story.”

“Story One comprises all the action leading to the hero’s disillusionment,” she explains.

Story One is about a person’s desire for something: a life-long dream, an expectation, a goal—but a complication throws up a roadblock. It can be something internal or external, and it makes fulfilling the dream seem impossible. It’s an obstacle that threatens the hope of achieving the goal. PJ describes it as “.… the chain of events that brings a hero to his knees.” (This unresolved problem supplies the all-important tension and suspense that keep readers reading to discover the problem’s resolution.)

The Heart of the Story comes next. It lies “between the failure and redemption.…” PJ describes it as the “death of the old belief system accompanied by insights into one’s higher nature.” This is where the person recognizes his hopes and expectations were unrealistic. Maybe his dreams were misguided. The time has come to challenge his assumptions. It’s where, PJ says, “most protagonists would straightaway fall into the dark heart of the story and wake-up to the facts of life.”

Story Two is about the resolution. Story Two is the new person that emerges on the other side. He has recognized his delusions and misconceptions and has made corrections. He has dealt with his failure or loss. He knows himself better. He sees his life and his place the world more accurately than before. The process was painful, but he has come out a better man, a stronger, more mature man. He now pursues the right dreams and goals in the right way.

Jon Franklin calls that progression “the odyssey from complication to resolution.”

A story that works, says Franklin, “will consist of a real person who is confronted with a significant problem, who struggles diligently to solve that problem, and who ultimately succeeds—and in doing so becomes a different character.”  (Writing for Story)

So, PJ and Franklin have shed light on the bigger picture when it comes to structuring our memoirs, but the day comes when you must pin down a specific order for your vignettes. 

If you want to arrange them according to theme  (rather than chronologically), William Zinsser suggests that once you’ve written a number of vignettes, “spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer’s best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it’s not about. They will tell you what’s primary and what’s secondary, what’s interesting and what’s not, what’s emotional, what’s important, what’s funny, what’s unusual, what’s worth pursuing and expanding. You’ll begin to glimpse your story’s narrative shape and the road you want to take. Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.” (How to Write a Memoir)

You might be saying, “Yeah, right, all I have to do it put the pieces together. Easier said than done.”

If you struggle to find the structure, “you must rely on blind faith that sooner or later it will appear,” says Judith Barrington. “You may need and enjoy the freedom of relative formlessness for a while—but not forever.”

And even when you think you’ve discovered the right structure, “You must be willing to adapt it, revise it, tinker with it, or entirely rethink it.” (Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir)

“Entirely rethink it.” That’s a good point. Maybe you’re like me: My vignettes don’t fit into just one memoir. I am dividing my stories into two or three memoirs, each with its own theme and message.

Related posts:

Your Memoir’s structure: think of it as a helper

“Where are youfrom?” and your memoir’s structure

Your finished memoir: how do you envision it? 

How do you start? Where do you start?

.

Are you a beginning memoir-writer? Are you puzzled about how to start? Where to start?

Lisa Tener recently interviewed Richard Hoffman, award-winning author and professor at Emerson College.

She asked Richard’s advice for beginning memoir-writers, specifically how and where to start.

His reply:

“Wherever you can! Think of a spiderweb. You can hook that first thread anywhere it will hold. The important thing is to not think in linear terms at all when you’re writing. Write scenes. Write pages of reflection. Write what’s available to you to write today. Memory’s mercurial; if something offers itself to be explored, explore it while it’s ‘live’. If you shoo it away because you’re convinced that today you’re going to work on, say, Chapter 7, it might not come back!

“Write modularly in the order that presents itself to you.… A book is read from the upper left-hand corner of page one to the lower right-hand corner of the last page — but that is not how it is written! At least not in my experience. Composition happens only later, when you’ve turned over every rock and shaken every tree. The next stage, fashioning a story, a narrative, from the parts comes pretty late in the process.” (Richard Hoffman, from Lisa Tener’s Writing Blog at http://www.lisatener.com/2011/05/writing-memoir-an-interview-with-richard-hoffman)

Many thanks, Lisa and Richard, for your helpful words.

Like I said last May in One little step at a time,* please be underwhelmed at the task of writing a book. In fact, avoid thinking “book.” Instead, concentrate on individual short stories.

For the next several months, take easy little steps: I suggest you review the definition of memoir* and write a few accounts, three to six pages each. That’s do-able, right? These rough drafts will eventually be chapters in your finished memoir.

Start with easy topics. Remember: You’ll learn the craft of memoir more easily if you begin with straightforward events.

I’ve seen too many beginners tackle a traumatic story, only to have their still-raw emotions sidetrack them. Inevitably, discouragement leads them to abandon that story and give up on writing their other stories, too. Don’t let that happen to you! 

Instead, start with less painful events—how God showed His love by bringing just the right doctor into your life, for example. Perhaps you saw God’s power demonstrated when He kept you from serious injury in a car accident. Maybe He gave you a glimpse of His beauty through a sunset or snowcapped mountain or butterfly.

Write your stories—not because of who you are,

but because of who God is.*

Write your stories as an act of worship.*

If a particular vignette is refusing to come to life, set it aside and work on something else. That thorny story might blossom another day.

Embrace what Richard said: Write what you can today.

Happy writing! 

Richard Hoffman authored the celebrated memoir Half the House; the short story collection Interference and Other Stories; and three poetry collections: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road; he’s the winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; and most recently, Emblem. He teaches at Emerson College and currently serves as chair of PEN New England.

*Related posts:

Your memoir: one little step at a time

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/your-memoir-one-little-step-at-time.html

What is a memoir

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-is-memoir.html

Not because of who you are, but because of who God is http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/07/your-stories-not-because-of-who-you-are.html

Your stories: an act of worship

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/08/your-stories-act-of-worship.html