WHY DO THIS MEMOIR THING?
Maybe you are old, like me. Maybe your memory is full of holes.
What is memoir? How do I write one? What if I don’t remember anything? Every sentence out of my mouth these days begins with either What or When or Why. I have no memory of yesterday! I have only shreds left of this morning! I look up the word memory and find that one of its ancient roots was a word meaning to mourn. So then I wonder why drag myself through all that again? But I am curious to find out how I became this person I would not have recognized fifty years ago. Curiosity, yes. One good reason.
We write memoir for clarity. Clarity is comfort.
Memoir is a one way to figure out how you got here from there. It’s up to you to decide where the here is and where the there was. You can start at what you think of as the beginning and go straight through chronologically. You can start in the present, and then bounce around in time. Now can become a kind of home base, from which you wander back and forth. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. It’s actually more fun if you don’t. Just begin. Fool around.
Don’t be afraid to begin a sentence with the words, “I don’t remember…” Write ten of them right now.
Then try ten more that begin with the words, “Why didn’t I…?”
In thirty years of writing and teaching I have found that an imperfect memory can be an advantage, and in some ways easier than having total recall. We all remember moments. We may not remember what came just before or after, but moments tend to remain. Why this? Out of everything I forgot, why this? If you had a perfect memory of every bite of every sandwich chewed and swallowed, it might be hard to pick what stands out, because everything connecting to everything else might blur what matters. Might not place emphasis in odd places, land on moments you can be curious about. If I had total recall, I picture myself in a small cage shaking the bars, desperate for something to detach and fall for me to pick up and examine closely.
Memoir does not have to fit neatly together like a puzzle. Memoir can be made of the fragments you remember. Once you start, you may find that one thing tends to lead to another. After a while they may begin to take shape. Keep going. There are only two hard and fast rules. Don’t make anything up, and don’t skip the hard stuff.
The more vulnerable you allow yourself to be, the stronger you become.
A good friend of mine asked me recently if I had heard of Abigail Thomas, and I said no, I hadn't. She sang your praises, and so I went and promptly got all of your books that I could find at my local library. I started with "What Comes Next and How to Like it," then "Safekeeping," and now I am on "Three Dog Life." I couldn't put any of them down. Reading them, I could see a way IN to the story I've been trying to write, but have been circling because of the holes...in my memory. The permission that opened up as I read your books, to write despite these gaps, to write the way I remember, to bounce around from there to here and back again - it's been life-giving. I wanted to say thank you. I'm so grateful to have read your books and found your work. I've been carrying your stories with me like little lights, taking them out and reading them as examples of how "it gets to be told" - just as it is - holes and all.
Memory is to mourn. Writing is for comfort. Don't make anything up or skip the hard stuff.
Great, helpful advice, if I remember properly.
Imagine remembering every bite of a sandwich,
Humor abounds.
Thank Abby!
P.S. I remember less every day, but feel confident I remember what I need to know or do when I need to know or do it.🌹