Order and sequence...

[sommemi]

Is anyone else having trouble organizing the things in their memoirs? I mean, it seems to me to be a lot more difficult to organize real life into a story than it is fiction. Mainly, sometimes you want to jump backwards in history for a little backstory, but then again, with memoirs it seems like you would want to write it in order of how it happened simply because it's real life.... ya know?

Yes yes, I know, it should still be told like a 'regular' story, and jumping around is allowable, but ... sometimes it just seems like because it is true stories that it just FEELS like it should go in order.... is it just me? I feel like I'm supposed to be 'documenting' stuff that happened as opposed to making a story out of it...

I'm so frustrated right now. lol I wish I had more time to work on this. I feel like when I finally sit down to do something useful on it, something more urgent comes up and 'plop'! onto the back burner it goes AGAIN.

[Wayne K]

Uncle Jim says you won't know where your book begins until you're done writing it. This has been my experience with both memoirs.

[Red Bird]

I feel your pain. I had to do some restructuring while writing my book, but upon completion I saw more sections were out of sequence. I'm still moving things around a bit, and because I expect more changes, I no longer transition things in. I mark where material was removed and where it was placed, but I don't want to waste time transitioning material that may be moved again.
I agree with Wayne's comment too. It's been my experience that with memoir the impact comes with writing the ending, which changes what you may want to convey most in the opening chapter.
Cheers,
Red Bird

[the addster]

I'm having a tough time with this too. I'm finding the events I'm writing about happened over a much shorter span of time than I had realized. One point hinges on a death, I wasn't sure about the date, looked it up and realized what I thought was the span of a year was only a few months.

PSTD is a hell of a drug.

[Chrisla]

Sommemi, you're singing my song. The admonition to write your memoir like a novel would seem to require a beginning hook, which often means a flashback. But I don't think memoir lends itself well to flashback. I've had my book completed for a long time, but I still can't "find the beginning." I don't know if my present beginning is a true one, or if it's backstory. But if it's necessary backstory, where do you put it in a memoir, if not in the beginning?

I've thought of having characters talking to each other to fill in backstory, but don't want to get into an "As you know, Bob" information dump (a la Uncle Jim).

Many of the fiction rules don't apply, when it comes to plot movement, etc.

[jerrywaxler]

I know there are lots of great reasons to try to write your memoir as close to a novel as possible - stories have a certain sense of motion and drama that readers expect. But after reading about 100 memoirs, I can vouch for the fact that few if any really read like a novel, and ones that do aren't the best.

For example, Sky of Stone, about a boy who grew up in a mining town, reads like a YA novel, and I found it too fiction-like to feel that it was authentic. My conclusion is that the rough edges help in some way make it feel more real.

Memoirs in my opinion are way more psychologically driven than a novel, and readers want the inner perspective, so you have to aim for the rules but then creatively shift to memoir-speak as needed.

Jerry

[Red Bird]

I'm so glad you said this, Jerry. Lately I've been bothered by the amount of dialogue, and drama expected from memoir. I know it's important to keep the reader interested and certain techniques do just that, but I shy away from memoir when it feels manipulative to me. I want the perspective as well.

It is my opinion that the greatest attribute to memoir writing is the ability to convey meaning, which I don't get from dramatic, staged scenes alone. There is a section in my book I have to rewrite because there is too much narrative, and excludes the reader, but for the most part, that's what I want in a memoir.

It's a tough genre because of the desire to tell the truth, put it in chronological order, deal with the emotions that bubble up and then make it more marketable through polishing. It's almost as if you have to disengage part of your brain when you begin revisions!


Cheers,
Red Bird

[Wayne K]

Interesting article I ran across today about memoir. http://dianaraab.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/memoir-and-truth/

The truth is when you write memoir, you are writing your truth as you remember it. It is no one else’s truth. It’s your own. You cannot be sued by a family member unless they can actually prove that what you wrote is a lie and many of you will agree how difficult this would be to do. When writing memoir, in either the short or long form, the best advice is to be as honest as possible. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, our memories are not reliable and they tend to play tricks on us.

It's a good article if you wish to read it all.

[Bluegate]

hmm. Gave the site a read and found it helpful. Thank you for the link Wayne.

[jerrywaxler]

I'm so glad you said this, Jerry. Lately I've been bothered by the amount of dialogue, and drama expected from memoir.


It's important to dig into this expectation and pick apart who is actually expecting these things? Are these the pundits or the readers? It's a very messy genre, just as life is messy. Read a bunch and find the enormous variety.



It's a tough genre because of the desire to tell the truth, put it in chronological order, deal with the emotions that bubble up and then make it more marketable through polishing. It's almost as if you have to disengage part of your brain when you begin revisions!



"Disengaging your brain" is known in psychological terms as "finding appropriate distance" - you separate yourself a bit from yourself and see the story of your life, giving you greater insight than while you were stuck inside it.

If you are a fan of Kurt Vonnegut, you may remember his metaphor of trying to watch experience through a straw. A memoir writer sees life from a much broader panorama. This is the deeper power of memoir, and is only discovered when you actually attempt it.

Have fun!

Jerry

[Nandi]

Memoirs in my opinion are way more psychologically driven than a novel, and readers want the inner perspective, so you have to aim for the rules but then creatively shift to memoir-speak as needed.

Jerry

Yes!

I think it's Judith Barrington who discusses the reflective narrator. Even when using a chronological frame for a memoir, one occasionally inserts this other narrator--the author, of course--who reflects upon what is happening and who may wish to relate this to something that happened at another time.

I have seen this done gracefully and effectively in both memoirs and novels. That way, it doesn't seem like an info-dump.

When writing the first draft, focusing on getting the chronological story written, with these occasional asides, is probably the easiest way to go. Portions can always be revised, removed, or shifted around in subsequent revisions.

[melaniehoo]

I wrote the first draft of a memoir a couple years ago and at the time, I thought organizing it into mini-sections was a good idea (based on theme). Now I don't, so if I ever go back to it, the first step will be moving everything around so it's chronological.

I don't think jumping around is a bad thing, as long as it's not overdone.

[Bluestone]

I attended a free book festival at the Encinitas library over the weekend and one of the panels was on memoir. It was a great panel of wildly diverse subjects and personalities. I was suprised at how helpful it was to me, despite all the differences.

One of the panelists said she started by getting a 3-ring binder with tabs and plastic sleeves. Organize the binder by years (or events or some other time line that makes sense to you) and start inserting the appropriate material into each plastic sleeve. The tabs identify the year of each plastic sleeve material and have a Table of Contents in the front that briefly fleshes out the years/events/timelines. Because it's a 3-ring you can always take out and insert a new Table or other pages. For example, based generally on my own WIP:

1985 - Illegal activities begin
1986 - cover up, destruction of evidence
1987 - FBI sting lands G and H in jail
1988 - H serves a year as family doc on an Indian Reservation
1989 - arsons, court cases
1990 - Grand Jury investigation into arson, suspects, testifying

This may not be relevent to some of you if what you write doesn't have research material, letters, newpaper articles, court documents, etc., but because I do have those things in my memoir I found this incredibly helpful. My memoir is focused on a part of my life that covers several years and I was driving myself crazy trying to remember "when did this happen?" "was this before or after" and "where is that article!" as I sorted through a box of papers I've been collecting for years.

I also think it makes sense to take a page from fiction advice and just start writing. Remember that it is a first draft and it isn't so important whether it's good or how much it will change later, but just to get something on paper. Once it's down, hopefully it will be the vehicle to determine how much to remove to showcase the actual memoir or whether the chronological order makes sense. At least that's what I'm hoping. I've written a novel and a How To, but only just started a memoir!

[sommemi]

Hard part for me is that almost all the stories are already written in my case... it's like taking a bunch of building blocks and saying "ok, do I want to stack up this building with all the red blocks on the bottom, then the yellow ones, then the blue ones... or do I just rotate it so it goes red, then blue, then yellow, then red, the blue.... or do I put all the red blocks on the left, all the blue in the middle and then...."

ARGH! It's really sucky. :-P