If you’re working on a memoir, like many debut authors do, it might seem so very hard. Unearthing all of that emotion is taxing, and for some writers, almost a torment. Whenever we’re tempted to back away from the challenge, we can remember our audience. Making a difference to others’ lives is why we write our life stories.
In the powerful essay collection Why We Write About Ourselves, David Sheff has healthy advice. “If what you’re writing about wasn’t intense, you wouldn’t be writing about it. Writing a memoir can dredge up every awful feeling all over again. Make sure you have the support you need to make it through.”
I wrote a memoir about searching for my belief in fatherhood. Stealing Home had plenty of soul-sharing, something my friend Donna Johnson warned me about. She wrote Holy Ghost Girl, a memoir about her years as a schoolgirl living with her mom in a tent preacher’s camp. Mom was in love with the preacher. “Be good to yourself while you’re doing this,” she said of making my memoir.
When it gets hard, we can wonder if we should continue to draw out the stories and memories. For some of us, we’ll never get to resolve the injustices of yesterday. People have died, sometimes. But your bigger reason to cast away that effort of settling scores is that readers don’t need a book to have a balanced view, not like the way journalism and nonfiction needs that. Telling what happened is still an important part of making a memoir. Telling it without judgement is where the nonfiction gets creative. Let the reader supply the judgement.
Make your difference
Another book sits beside my copy of those essays. Writing A Book That Makes a Difference tells us that aesthetic distance helps us move between reality and storytelling. You remove yourself from story events, or zoom in, as needed, so the readers feel like it’s a story. Not a report on real life.
We care about what readers feel, a concern that helps us dig deeper. We want to create a testament to that part of our lives covered in our memoirs. Much more important: how your memoir can change a reader’s life. They see what happened and they understand how much it hurt, if your writing is vulnerable. You survived it, though. That personal story gives readers a way to reconsider their own lives, wherever big questions like peace or forgiveness match up with the story on your pages.
Pulling this kind of matchup out of the hours of memoir work involves imagination — not just memory. You should always know your audience while writing a book, defining the group of readers as precisely as you can. People who trained for a contest, that might be the audience. Readers who had tough relations with a parent, in spite of family privilege.
You get your support from fellow survivors, or people who write stories and would talk with you about yours. You could also get support from a therapist, or sometimes an old friend. Support can also come from an author coach, reading your work and dishing out both praise and suggestions.
Expand your network to get the support you need. Change your habits about the days you write your memoir’s stories. Sleep more. Exercise. Sing in the shower. Imagine how another human’s life burden will be lightened, for a little while, after you tell your story with accuracy and without judgement.
