Write Your Own Damn Memoir

Eighteen months ago, I found myself with time on my hands and wanted to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where you write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. Unfortunately, I had no good ideas that I could envision seeing through to any end. I decided instead to write down every memory I could think of, in no particular order, to see what would come out. I wrote every day, and six weeks later, I had 75,000 words. It wasn’t every single memory I have, but it was all the ones that didn’t involve sex, drugs or rock and roll. Kidding, I have no drug memories because I am totally square in that regard. I decided I would save the sex and rock and roll memories for my next creative drought. While it only took me six weeks to write 75,000 words, it took me another thirteen months to pound it into something resembling a memoir that might be interesting to other people.

A lot of people want to write a book. In fact, I heard someone say that 97% of people say it’s on their bucket list to do so. Far fewer people follow through on that dream. 97% seems high to me; most people express surprise that I’ve managed to write a whole one.

Memoirs are notoriously difficult to get published but that’s no reason you shouldn’t write one. Writing a memoir is a very edifying challenge that can help a person better understand their own life, leave a record for their family, or tell the world a story it hasn’t heard yet. Here are my tips for getting started:

1. Write down some words

You gotta start somewhere. That can even be your first sentence if you want. Your second sentence can be, “I don’t know what to say!” See? The reader is already intrigued by your mystery.

2. Write down all the words

Keep writing. Write a lot of words. Don’t edit them. Don’t erase them. Don’t even spellcheck them. Write down secrets, recipes, dreams, spite lists, dumb jokes. Don’t show them to anyone. Don’t write everything in order unless it flows better that way. Just write all the stories you have. Suddenly you’ll find that the important ones bubble up to the top and you want to write them down.

3. Get some goals that make sense

100 words a day. 200 words a day. 1000 words a day. 20 minutes. 10 minutes. Whatever. It’s all about the habit. The NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in a month sounds daunting, but its only 1,667 words per day, which takes much less time to type than you might think.

4. Put your stories in chronological order

All credit to Ta-Nehisi Coates for this one. When you are done with your first draft, put the stories in chronological order. Don’t do this on your computer. Print up all the pages and sort them by hand.

5. Read them

Finally, you get to read this monster memory baby you’ve created! Just read it. Don’t fix typos or do line edits. Notice which stories are funny, which ones are cringey, boring, feel less authentic than what you meant to say, and make some general notes about them. You’ll go back and fix them later.

NOW — Stop and thank yourself for writing all those words. Instead of letting despair creep in (“It’s so bad!”), thank the person (Past You) who wrote them all down, giving Present You so much juicy stuff to work with. In the next steps, you are going to do your best work so that Future You has less work to do.

6. Now you can find your story

The pages don’t have to stay in chronological order. Once you read it, you’ll see which parts are The Story, and which ones are just vignettes that happened to be crawling around in your brain. Identify The Story, and try to write a three sentence summary. When you revise, you’ll either bringing vignettes into conformity with the story and putting them aside for a different story. You may remember new things that relate to The Story. You can add them in the revision process.

7. Take out some of the words

First step, take out the vignettes and put them in a separate document. This is the gentle way of saying, “Kill your darlings,” but you might need them later, so don’t kill them completely. Just put them in exile. Second step, rack your brain for more stories that relate to the main story and write them. Put them where they belong. Look for adverbs and cut as many as you can. See whether words repeat, and whether other words might be better. Can the feelings you described by shown through descriptions? Revising is hard, and there are lots of good books and classes where you can get ideas. You’ve already written the book. Isn’t it worth seeing through to the end now?

8. Let someone else read it

Not a family member. Take a writing class, find a writing group. There are several online forums where you can get feedback (like Scribd or Scribophile). Or serialize it in a blog and see if anyone comments! Take people’s advice but also ignore some of it.

9. Rinse and Repeat (I.e., Revise it again)

At some point, some magical point, you’ll know you’ve hit upon a draft that feels ready to be shared.

In future posts, I will talk about what “sharing” means, but in the meantime, you’ve got writing to do! If you like my writing, subscribe to The Squeak Newsletter for more. https://tinyletter.com/AndreaLD.