Do you re-memoir me?

With a memoir, you've got to have an angle or something that makes your story unique and different enough for a publisher to want to put money out for your MS.

Mental illness? Not so unique.
Alcoholic/depressed spouse? Not so unique.
Two mentally ill people marrying? Common, most people marry others who are emotionally on par with each other.
Two mentally ill spouses with a difficult marriage? Expected.

That's not to say you shouldn't write a memoir. Can you do it better than anything else not already on the market? How would this effect your kids? How will writing this effect you?

My own personal opinion is you're right in the middle of stuff with your husband, so waiting to see how it resolves and how you process all that is probably the best idea, if you decide to do this. I don't mean to say you can't be writing while you're in the chaos-- just that if you've got the memoir in the back of your mind you could miss out on doing what you need to live your life in the present because you're writing it (from a psych perspective, not from a writing perspective). If you write, do it as an exercise to help your life, not for a book. If the writing later is book worthy, then go from there.

Since you're still in the middle of it, write it now as a journal so you don't lose any bits and pieces. Then, as you write it down, you may see an arc that resolves before your current life does. If so, that can be your memoir. A year in the life.. or something like that.

My memoir deals with one thread from a two year time frame, and the two years aren't up yet. It's both a travel memoir and a biography -- a journal of discovery, so to speak-- and when the memoir gets thin, I work on the bio part which deals with someone else.

Hi Lisa

Like Ruth and Amy, I say write. Whether as a journal for now or a memoir in the making, it doesn't matter. Ultimately, you can make it what you want it to be.

Frankly, bipolar disorder remains greatly misunderstood and I would imagine that with the rapidly growing numbers in America alone (the highest prevalence by the way), there is a market for such memoirs. There are many out there, many that are more of the same but most with good insights. You just need to make yours very readable and honest.

Today is as good as any to start!

Lmc71775 said:

It involves mental illness, a rocky marriage (that may or may not lead into seperation) dealing with me on disability and my husband on unemployment. I suffer from the Bipolar disorder and I have a good feeling he suffers from depression and he is an alcoholic. I have read this is all too common in memoirs. Not sure if it is even worth it. Plus I am writing in pieces, like short snippits, can I do that too? Someone already said one piece doesn't match the other, but why should it have to? It will all connect eventually.

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Instead of writing about the obvious - which as others have pointed out may not be strong enough to set your story apart from the others - is there a particular challenge you've faced either alone or together and overcome? Is there some daylight in an otherwise dark (sounding) world? Are you both perhaps involved in something that helps keep you together?

Just throwing out some thoughts, but maybe if you had a strong focal point you could build your memoir around it. What might help is thinking about the general structure of a memoir - what do you want, what's at stake, what's in your way, and how do you go about overcoming?

In my memoir, I answer one specific question: why does his music move me? In answering that, I explore his story, his country-- and our unlikely friendship. (Shy Texas housewife and Slovenian national icon.)

What question does your memoir answer?

khobar said:

Instead of writing about the obvious - which as others have pointed out may not be strong enough to set your story apart from the others - is there a particular challenge you've faced either alone or together and overcome? Is there some daylight in an otherwise dark (sounding) world? Are you both perhaps involved in something that helps keep you together?

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These are good thoughts, khobar. Same ones which crossed my mind when i first started several years ago. I chose to focus on the good outcome.

One of my editors said I had a strong hook and even then I have been doing nothing but chalking up Rs with my queries.

So yes, I agree a different angle is good to consider but a great story and an agent, that ONE agent who thinks it can be sold, is what matters for publication

@Lisa keep writing. Let the Heavens decide, when you're done, what best to make of your ms

I think you should continue to write. There's nothing wrong with writing for therapeutic purposes, and there's nothing wrong with writing for yourself. Maybe it will be publishable/sellable, maybe it won't, but you won't really know until you write it.

sonyablue said:

I think you should continue to write. There's nothing wrong with writing for therapeutic purposes, and there's nothing wrong with writing for yourself. Maybe it will be publishable/sellable, maybe it won't, but you won't really know until you write it.

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