If
you’re thinking about writing a memoir, you need to know the definition of “memoir.”
And
if you’re already writing your story, sometimes you need to remind yourself
what a memoir is. This helps focus correctly and work efficiently.
A
memoir is so much more than spinning yarns and telling tales.
Since
there’s some confusion about the genre of memoir, let’s pin down what it is not:
Memoir is not journaling. A journal is private—for your eyes only—but you write
a memoir for others to read.
A
memoir is not an autobiography. An autobiography documents your whole life
beginning with the day you were born, but a memoir focuses on one segment of
your life—(1) a specific theme or (2) a time period, a slice of life.
You
can write a memoir based on a theme—for example, the theme of working as a
seamstress in Asia, or a food vender at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, or a stepmother
to six kids.
Focus
on only that theme, leaving out other topics—such as the fact that you might be
friends with a famous movie producer, or that you worked at an animal shelter your
first year after college.
Or
you can write a memoir based on a time period. My first memoir, Grandma’s Letters from Africa, covers my first four years in Africa. My second memoir,
Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir, focuses on three years in South America.
Another
person’s time period might be his teenage years, or the years following a spouse’s
death, or service in the Peace Corps. We focus only on that slice of our lives
and leave out other topics.
We
include only those details that pertain to our chosen window of time or our
memoir’s theme.
Personal
reflection is a key ingredient in memoir. Remember that. Most of us need to work
on understanding what reflection is because, as Richard Foster observes, “The
sad truth is that many authors simply have never learned to reflect substantively
on anything.”
So,
memoirists reflect in a deliberate way:
You
look back,
peel
away layers,
excavate,
find
the gems.
Dig them out in pieces if you must,
but dig them out.
Inspect.
Examine
those gems,
ponder
their deeper meaning.
Spend as much time as you need
to make sense of what you discover.
Uncover
the deeper, higher, wider, richer story.
In
the past you might have overlooked something of the utmost importance, so make
time to search for those profound lessons—insights, healing, blessings—in the events
of your life.
In
the process, you might need to do a “Doggie Head Tilt,” a phrase Michael Metzger coined. “If your head never tilts,” he says, “your mind never changes.”
True!
In
the process of reflecting, answer these questions:
- What new things have I learned about myself because of the key events of my life?
- What new things did I learn about significant people in my life? About God?
- How have these discoveries made me into a different, better person?
Not
all memoirs include a spiritual dimension.
But
if you are writing a spiritual memoir, keep this in mind: It does not require that you have exceptional, supernatural
religious stories to write about, stories that would make the evening news and
get tweeted around the world. Instead, look for ways God was involved in your everyday
life.
You
don’t have to write about God in every chapter. Whether you realized it at the
time or not, He was with you, busy working out His good plans for His
children—and from time to time in your stories you can spell out what He was
doing. And do so in a winsome way, rather than sounding holier-than-thou.
Jesus
said,
“Go
tell your family everything God has done for you”
(Luke
8:39).
Write your memoirs!
