A memoir is a subjective story, written from the point of view of you, the narrator and main character of the story, the protagonist. This means that you are translating your experiences—the moments in your life that are significant and make up the spine of your story. This translating is part of the challenging work of writing a memoir; it means that we do our best to present the inner world—our thoughts and feelings as well as our actions—to the audience, the reader, the outer world.
Stand in the shoes of the reader for a moment. The reader is outside your world, and it’s only your words, the descriptions and scenes that bring the reader inside your experience. We need to write our memoir from the inside out, and then stand outside ourselves to get a perspective on what the reader sees. This can make a memoir writer feel a little crazy—this juggling of inner and outer swivels our heads as we try on these different points of view.
In the early drafts, it’s best to write from a deeply subjective place, a place of memory and buried feelings, and it’s important to allow this kind of process to take place. This is part of being a translator as you bring upward the memories and experiences that took place long ago, bringing them into the light of the present. In the now, we view these moments differently than we did then. When we are young, quite often we don’t have words for our experiences yet. When we write now, we have the benefit of perspective and time. Still, it’s our responsibility to honor the person we were in the past, to try to portray that time and the challenges of our lives with the most accuracy we can muster.
Allow yourself several drafts and some time to sort through your memories. Make a list of the important moments that will be part of your story, and freewrite them—set a timer and write as fast as you can for about 20 minutes. This way you don’t spend time hemming and hawing about what to write. Freewriting speeds you past the inner critic. It’s likely that you will spill out the truth of your situation in the story, that you will write without censoring—the idea of the exercise. You are capturing your inner world, how you felt and thought in a rough draft. No, it’s not going to be how you will eventually present your story, but it will likely be authentic, it will be the inside story of your life.
Later, much later when you have done 10 to 20 of these exercises, you can begin to be more objective about your story. By writing it, you’ll be claiming your story, getting acquainted with it, and learning what it is about. You will end up working your way toward more objectivity, as you begin to observe yourself as a character. You start to be able to stand outside the story. Throughout the drafts of over 300-400 pages, you’ll be doing a weaving of this inside-out perspective. I believe that being able to take both perspectives allows us the freedom to write what’s in our hearts while at the same time we learn to view our story as a witness. Learning to become a narrator and a witness draws upon different parts of our brains, and is a healing act. I wish you the best in writing your memoir this month!
Thank you Linda Joy. This is exactly what I needed to hear today. Sometimes I feel like if I didn’t bleed or weep on the page that it is somehow less authentic. This article validates my current role as an “observer” and my role as “heroine.” Initial free writes became first draft in your “write your memoir in six months class.” This resulted in an invite by an agent, an edit and now a subsequent re-write. Along the way themes emerged and what I’m learning from this “observers” stance is that I have the opportunity to introduced them sooner in the story.
Also, when I sent off the last draft I felt liberated from my grief in a way I had not for a very long time. I’ve been afraid of re-visiting that hold on me, but by becoming the ‘observer’ perhaps I can also maintain some levity. Thank you, I really got a lot out of this post.
I agree with Jean, a great post where I learned much. Bravo, Jean in finding an agent for your memoir. All the best to you in 2016.
Linda Joy, I’ve learned so much from your posts as well as our Write Your Memoir course. I’m working on finding my themes and becoming the observer in my memoir about attending college as a mother with five children in tow.
Thank you both, ladies!
Freewriting is a great way for me to get the words of a memory on paper then after a month or two I read over what I have written. If the story calls for reflection or needs dialogue for clarity or entertainment, I add it. I try not to over edit until I like the structure of the story. What is hard for me is to find a framework that is the spine of the overall memoir and holds the individual stories together, so I keep writing stories and hope a framework appears soon. Thank you, Linda Joy, for your help through your books and NAMW. I have learned many helpful writing skills and wouldn’t be where I am in writing my memoirs with out it.
Such a helpful post at just the write time for me in my writing journey! Thanks so much for sharing Linda Joy!
Excellent article. I have used the “free-write” or “free-fall” method for my 4 memoirs now and believe it’s the only way to write memoir. It’s what I recommend in my memoir writing workshops, along with my podcasts. What you are saying here works with that approach completely. I’ll be sharing this with my Memoirabilia group on Facebook.
I really appreciate this post! ‘Stand in the shoes of the reader…’. This is very good advice! I kept telling myself that the reader doesn’t know anything, the reader knows nothing…the reader knows nothing unless I show and tell them. It helped me on my final draft. Hoping I got it right! My memoir is finish!
Thankyou. Great stuff!
This is a great description of what a memoir is and how to deal with writing one. Thank you! After writing half of my first draft, I was considering a different approach to “spilling it all out”, but, based on your article and comments from other non-fiction writers, I might stick with this approach until the first draft is done, before narrowing things down and focusing on one theme…
Congrats Jean for finding an agent! I am trying to do all this myself (no classes, no experience, not even an English native speaker…) and it is hard at times. But, soon, I will be ready enough to try and find an agent as well. The story is there! 🙂
Liesbet @ Roaming About – A Life Less Ordinary