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.

When you write a memoir about fishing, writes William Zinsser in Writing About Your Life, your subject is “the transaction between yourself and fishing—as a sport, as a pastime, as therapy, as a buddy experience, as a solitary experience, as a food-gathering experience, or whatever drew you to it.”

The same thing is true when you write a memoir about a place that no longer exists. What is the transaction between you and the place? What is its pull? What memories do you bring? What is the real place like now? Who used to live there? Who lives there now? What is still there? What is gone?

Barbara Krasner visited her grandmother’s ancestral home, Ostrów Mazowiecka (Ostrova in Yiddish) in Poland while she was doing research for a young adult novel that takes place in nearby or Zaromb (Yiddish). Her 30-photo exhibit of these Jewish communities which no longer exist, “My Home Is Gone—Remnants of Jewish Poland,” will be shown at the JCC of Metrowest in West Orange, New Jersey September 12-October 31, 2010.

What is the pull of a place that no longer exists? How do you write about it? Let me know.

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?

Here’s another recipe memoir. Lucinda was my grandmother’s grandmother, so her recipe for ginger cookies is probably the oldest family heirloom we have. I made these cookies one Thanksgiving. In spite of the fact that they are not as rich as the cookies we are used to eating today, the high school kids gobbled them up. Lucinda Frances (Locke) Mock lived from 1846 to 1940.

Lucinda Mock’s Ginger Cookie Recipe by Martha Jewett

At the Self-Publishing Book Expo I attended recently in New York, I met three women whose memoirs successfully tackle these potentially overpowering topics:

1. leaving your country of origin;
2. growing up in a faraway land;
3. being raped or sexually abused.

Past experiences such as these may seem too big to write about comfortably. But perspective changes everything. Check out these three memoirs and how each woman’s viewpoint has shaped her storytelling.

  (more…)