Writing a Memoir, Writing a Biography | Write Your Memoir

I used to think memoir consists of three things: (1) writing, (2) in the first person, (3) about a thin slice of a person’s life. “The reader doesn’t want the whole iceberg, just the tip,” to paraphrase Russell Baker.

Now I realize memoir is much broader. First of all, you have a lot of other objectives–besides the act of writing itself–when you create memoirs. You want to: 

• record family stories
• research family history
• find lost relatives
• socialize with lost relatives once you've found them
• discover your DNA
• collect and preserve family data
• get over something traumatic
• tell the story behind a family memento
• create personal documents (video, audio, shadow boxes, etc.)
• get rid of something heavy which you've been carrying around (secret, imposition, demand)
• catalogue, organize, and archive family documents, photos, and memorabilia
• take the sting out of something painful
• save and identify family heirlooms
• capture family information that would otherwise be lost.

I now have a working definition of memoir which is much more broad. Memoir is the communication of what you want to remember and what you want to be remembered. Which leads me to two more points. First, you can get really creative and use any of the following as the basis of a memoir:  

• letters you quote
• recipes
• random memories
• your hopes for the future
• a secret you no longer want to keep
• family sayings
• something that always got on your last nerve
• a mystery you never figured out
• funny family anecdotes
• what you want your legacy to be
• describing what’s going on in an iconic family photo
• a list of your favorite things and why
• describing how you got around a long time ago
• how a business used to make money
• your worst vacation
• how you kept the house cool in the summer
• the most expensive thing you ever bought
• a portrait of a relative using your five senses (see, hear, feel, taste, smell).

Second point. You don’t have to write at all. Lots of your "stuff" can be turned into a memoir:    

• Photographs
• Video
• Audio
• What things cost
• Collages
• Political buttons and pins
• Jewelry
• Fabrics
• A telephone bill
• “Shrines” you create
• Scrapbooks
• Songs
• Guns
• Music
• Portraits
• Paintings
• Statues
• Pottery
• Drawings
• Furniture
• Clothing
• Games
• Puzzles
• Tools
• Maps
• Drawings
• Self-portraits

Even a packing list from 50 years ago could be the basis for a great memoir. So, I ask you:

• What do you want to remember?
• What do you want others to remember?

Tell me about the memoir you create. Send me a photo.

I once found a photo tucked inside a book at an estate sale. The photo showed a Model T in ruins, destroyed by what looked like a head-on collision. The photo jumped out at me. I took it the man, about my age, who was running the garage sale. His mother had just died and he was selling the contents of her house. I handed him the photo. “This looks important,” I said.

He stood transfixed, staring at the photo. “Mother told us about that crash. Both she and Dad survived it. But I never knew if the story was true.”

My mother-in-law, Maxine (Shanbar) Marshall, has an iconic memoir photo. Her photo shows an apartment building (not hers) being moved from its location near Poplar Street in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The reason? The construction of The Mystic River Bridge (now the Tobin Memorial Bridge).

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Why not make your memoir writing easier? Why not organize it around an iconic photo?

Our friend Julie from Cedar Grove, New Jersey, got stuck when she was writing a family memoir about her mother.  Julie wanted to include her “bits and pieces”— her random memories about her mother. But she felt they wouldn’t be as good as the rest of her memoir, which was structured chronologically. She quit.

Beginning memoir writers often get stuck at this point. They want to write about material that is unconnected or unrelated, but don’t know how. Memoir Writing Technique #1 enables you to write coherently about unrelated items, such as: random memories, fun you had, childhood memories, collections of family sayings. We like to compare the random “bits and pieces” to pearls. The key to making a beautiful necklace is how you string the pearls together. 

Step One–Write and Organize the Bits

Write down the memory bits. Don’t worry about the order.  Then, group the bits into segments or sections by theme. For example: Let’s say you want your memoir topic to be about sayings you heard growing up.  Write them down in no particular order, as they come to mind. Then, categorize the sayings into segments or sections, for example:

• funny things your Uncle Bill always said—that’s one segment or section
• something a gas station attendant said to your mom which became part of the family lore—that’s a segment or sections
• Acronyms your dad quoted all the time because he had been in the Navy—that’s a segment or section

Lastly:

• Something your football coach lived by and which you adopted—that’s a segment or section

 These segments or sections will become paragraphs or parts of paragraphs, depending on how long they are. Note: if your bits and pieces are too short to turn into sections or segments, simply put them in a bulleted list. 

Step Two–Write an Introduction

The introduction must tell your readers what the memoir is about and must signal to the reader how the memoir is structured.  

Here’s how you do that. Look at all the segments or sections you’ve just created. Write an introductory sentence that is broad enough to encompass all of them. For example:

“These are the family sayings I heard growing up.”

“Here is everything I remember about living in Utica, New York, in no particular order.”

Step Three–Insert Transitions

Step three is to insert transition sentences between the sections or segments, as necessary. Transition sentences are like the string in a necklace. The string turns the separate pearls into a work of art. Transition sentences or phrases give the reader a heads-up about the structure you are using and provide coherence. Here are examples of  how transition sentences would start:

• “Another thing that happened was…”
• “Another time”
• “In addition,”
• “Also”
• “There is also”
• “He also said”
• “Nothing else meant more to me than…”
• “I don’t remember much more except”

Step Four: Re-Read and Edit 

Read through your memoir. Check whether your introduction is broad enough to cover all the segments or sections in your memoir. Check whether the transitions add the right amount of coherence.  Read it aloud to yourself. Ask a friend to read it. What you are checking is: will my audience be able to see the structure? Have I provided enough transition sentences? Is my overall topic clear? Bear in mind that someone reading this in the future may not know you, or anything about you.

Our Memoir Writing Technique #1 enables you to write a professional-quality memoir about unrelated or loosely related bits and pieces.

Let us know how your memoir turns out. Write to us at writeyourmemoir.com

Selecting food as a memoir topic is always a good way to get un-stuck if you are stuck. Food looms large in our childhood memories and brings back so many associations. For example, I always think of Mom when I see a lima bean. She cooked them until their insides were sawdust. I wrapped them in my napkin. I stuffed the napkin into the top of the table leg. At the top, just under the table, the leg attached to the table with three prongs, making a little nest. I got away with disposing of the lima beans that way for awhile. But my brother, Tom, wasn’t as lucky. He says he dumped his lima beans down the garbage disposal, but Mom found out and served them to him again the next day. 

In “Hungry Men” in the November 9, 2009, issue of Fortune, Daniel Okrent reviews just-released food memoirs by two “world-class eaters.” The books are: Eating by Jason Epstein and Far Flung and Well Fed by R. W. Apple, Jr. (FYI: Neither author has a website. R. W. Apple, Jr. died in 2006.) Check out the titles at your local online or bricks-and-mortar bookstore.

Epstein and Apple apparently had refined palates and enjoyed fine meals. In contrast, the stories (and memories) in my “recipe memoirs” are often better than the food. One of my favorite recipe memoirs is “How Train Wreck Got Its Name.”

What follows is a recipe memoir I have shared with my family, which always brings lots of smiles.

How Train Wreck Got Its Name

My mother, Mary Jewett, used to make a macaroni casserole we called Train Wreck. I thought it was Tom, my little brother, who gave Train Wreck its name. But Tom says Mom always credited George C. Papanicolaou.

George was a Union College student from Greece, who  lived with us at 3 Douglas Road in Schenectady, NY, our home from 1962-1965. George had the third-floor room with the Palladian windows under the front gable. George is now a math professor at Stanford. As Mom told it, George bounded down into the kitchen, looked in the pot on the stove, and said, “Mrs. Jewett, that looks like a train wreck!” To complicate matters, Aunt Ellie (Mom’s sister-in-law, Ellie Jewett) says, no, it was her son, Rick, who christened Train Wreck.

Train Wreck has many variations and names, including American Chop Suey and Hungarian Goulash. Here’s my recipe.

TRAIN WRECK

1. 1 lb. ground beef

2. 2 T oil

3. 1 onion, finely chopped (or more to taste)

4. 1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped (or more to taste)

5. Other spices. I buy from Penzeys: Penzey’s Italian Herb Mix (1 T),  Penzey’s Granulated Garlic Powder (2 T), Penzey’s Onion Powder (2 T), and Penzey’s Bay Leaf Seasonings (2 t); sugar (2 t); 1 bay leaf (remove before serving); and salt & pepper.

6. 1 26.5-oz. can or  26-oz. jar of spaghetti sauce

7. 1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes

8. 1 16-oz. box macaroni, cooked al dente and drained (I like shells)

Cook beef, drain fat, and set aside. Simmer items # 2-5 until onions are soft. Add water as needed. The longer you simmer this before adding the rest of the ingredients, the better it tastes. Add the meat and items # 6-7 and simmer at least 10 minutes. Add item # 8. Correct seasoning.

Do you have a food memories that would make a good memoir? Let me know.