Nobody Remembers Your Story the Way You Do

My daughter recently sent me a copy of an article she’d written with the following note in her email: “… I’m kind of stealing your stories here and wonder if it’s okay and if you want o me to change anything …”

I was pleased that she had the professionalism and courtesy to alert me and ask permission first.

I read the article with interest. It was strong and well-written, but I saw with dismay that although she had the general sense of my experiences right, most all the specifics were inaccurate. I called her and set the record straight, giving the story my blessing.

This experience underscores three fundamental facts about the importance of writing your own life story.

If you want your story written right, write it yourself.

My father is a great story teller. I’ve spent untold hours listening to him tell about his father’s job killing prairie dogs for the USDA (I think it was the USDA – I’m not entirely sure, which emphasizes my point here), teaching cadets to fly bombers during WW II(I always forget the full list of models) and endless others. The fact is, I don’t even remember all the subjects, much less the details. Fortunately he has written many of his stories – but nowhere near all of them. There are still huge gaps. Most of his stories will die with him, along with fragments of family history that he’s the last to remember at all.

I’m doing my part to perpetuate them. I’ve been turning on my tiny digital recorder while he talks – when I have it handy and remember. That’s better than nothing, but he lives 2500 miles away, so our time together is limited and editing or transcribing recordings is hard, time-consuming work.

Sharing stories with others is a great way to set the record straight.

If my daughter had not written her story and shown it to me, she would never have known the actual facts, and I would not have realized this. There was no harm in the way she told the story, but setting the record straight gave her a little more insight into the relationship I had with my mother and a couple of other things.

Had she not written this story, these facts would never have all been on the table at the same time, and neither of us would have connected the dots.

Collaboration fills in blanks in family history.

The fun part is that had my daughter not written this story, I’m pretty sure I never would have – at least not that way. Her approach of  writing and checking facts worked well, even though that wasn’t her specific intention. She was simply being respectful. If you have family members available to collaborate with on writing family history, seize the moment.

Write now: write a story based on your memory of a relative’s experiences that hold meaning for you. Show the story to your relative and ask for their version. You may want to change your story to incorporate their edits. Another possibility is to incorporate their version as additional observations, for example, “In Aunt Gussie’s version of this story, Uncle Herman … )

Photo credit: Ken Banks

Valentine Memory Whispers

When I think of Valentine’s Day, I always think of red heart boxes full of chocolate candy. When I was young, my father always gave a great big box of candy to my mother, and smaller boxes, with half a dozen pieces each to my sister and me. I always ate all of mine right then and there, and nibbled from Mother’s until it was gone too.

But I have many more Valentine’s Day memories. For example, I remember decorating shoeboxes each year for classmates to fill with valentines. That was a tense situation. Back then there was no mandate that you had to bring one for each person in the class, and somehow everyone seemed to know how many who got, and who gave which to whom. I always groaned inwardly when I counted and found a shortfall. It didn’t matter that only one person ever got a card from everyone in our class. I wanted to be in that category too, and I wasn’t!

Did I remember on those Valentine’s Days that there were always one or two people I simply could not bring myself to address cards to? Why would I have thought I’d get one from everyone when I didn’t give one to everyone?

Embedding questions and reflections like that adds juice to a story or memoir, and they aren’t always easy to answer. It takes a bit off practice to even recognize those whispery thoughts that arise as we write – they are easy to ignore, but worth heeding. They add a “mystery ingredient” to stories. When you capture one of these thoughts, take a break from writing  for a bit of memory analysis.

My example

I close my eyes, lean back, and picture myself sitting at our gray limed-oak dining room table, staring out the window at the sky. The table surface is just below armpit level, so my arms stretch straight out. A dittoed list of classmates is on my left. A pile of valentines from the bag I bought for a dollar at Draggon Drug is spread out before me.

These are so dumb. Nobody talks like that, I think as I flip through them. That’s actually part of their effectiveness. Nobody really talks this way, so nobody will take them seriously. I know it’s just a game we play to be nice and fit in, and oh, how I want to fit in! It’s not easy, but I work my way down the list, picking a card for each, signing my name, and addressing the flimsy envelopes. I draw a line through each name as I finish. I’m pleased with my progress.

Then I come to a name that stops me cold. Wilber Winslow (name changed to protect the guilty) is such a creep! I’ll throw up if I have to give him a card, even if I could find one that says “Roses are red, violets are blue, reform school’s the place, for people like you.”

I know he won’t give me a card, so why humiliate myself by giving him one when I know I won’t get one in return? I’m in proactive self-defense mode.  A girl has to have some self-respect.

Yes, there’s my answer. I knew I wouldn’t get cards from everyone, and I’ve gotten in touch with my inner Mean Girl and the angst and frustration of fourth grade.

That’s a more interesting story and perhaps more helpful to my grandchildren, one of whom just worked through a similar situation, but with a difference. In this enlightened era, in her school, they are required to give a valentine to each member of the class – even the bratty boy who teases her mercilessly behind the teacher’s back. But that’s her story to write when she grows up.

Write now: think of a tense situation in your past and try re-entering the scene. Think it through. What do you see? What do you hear? What are you thinking? What story are you telling yourself? Write about it. 

Photo credit: Dan4th Nicholas

Memoir: Breaking Through to the Next Level

Over the last few days I’ve read two memoirs back-to-back, Margaret Overton’s Good in a Crisis and Jonna Ivin’s Will Love For Crumbs. Both stories revolve around disastrous relationships with men. I was struck by the fact that although these two women had very different backgrounds and their stories are quite different, each had to piece together the puzzle of her mother’s life to break free and follow a different path. I was reminded of computer games where you must find all the hidden tools to advance to the next level. 

As I thought about this similarity, I realized how universal this theme is. I did study Freud once, along with a tower of other psychology books, and dimly recall some psychobabble about “differentiation.” Obviously there is nothing new under the sun here, other than airing this process in public. That public sharing angle is the aspect that most fascinates me.

Thinking beyond the stories themselves, I realized that as I read each one, it stimulated me to think more deeply about my own life and relationships. I realized once again that although I’ve certainly faced my share of puzzling and tense times,  for the most part I’ve led a charmed life, spared most of the traumas they disclose. In spite of the odds against it, I’ve remained happily married for nearly fifty years, and my mother’s shortcomings are hardly worth mentioning. Still, although comparing my life challenges to theirs may be like placing the Blue Ridge mountains next to the Himalayas, reading how these women “broke through to the next level” and became more peaceful and comfortable in their skin settled me more securely in my own. 

As I pondered the powerful effect these books had on me, a light went on. Each woman explained at the end of her book that she initially began journaling or writing random notes in an attempt to make sense of her experience. Transforming those notes into a coherent narrative was a profoundly healing experience. That healing process rippled out to me as a reader, and presumably to a multitude. Perhaps, just maybe, those of us who are “called” to write and share our stories are gifted with the opportunity to help others find hidden clues and find their own next levels of peace and freedom. As we heal ourselves, the effect spreads through our words into the world at large. 

I’m reminded of thoughts I’ve heard, perhaps from Christina Baldwin, and probably also from others, about “restorying” the world. I’ve written a pile of blog posts scattered around the web about my own experience with revis(ion)ing my memories and discovering far more light in them than I ever imagined. I know the process works, and some memory visualization tools I’ve found are magic cursors pointing to hidden tools and maps.

Not everyone wants or needs to write and fewer still want to share their work. For many or most, it’s enough to read or privately journal. To whatever extent you are called to write for peace and healing, whether it be a letter of reconciliation and forgiveness, a single short story, or several volumes of memoir, write with boldly honest passion and flood the world with light. I’m beginning to find tangible evidence that as we heal the past, we also heal the future. Let’s get on with that!
As an aside, there is still time to register for my 3-week NAMW short course, Soaring High and Digging Deep: Tools for Refining Your Memoir. It begins this week. Find more details and sign up for the class and this month’s related free Roundtable here. 

Write now: start a collection of random notes about a person or situation that puzzles you. Add to this collection over time as further thoughts occur to you. When you run out of new thoughts, read through what you’ve written and transform that to narrative. As you work on that story, your understanding is almost guaranteed to shift.

Writing Around Obstacles

As anyone who has written more than a dozen life stories or begun a memoir knows, some stories flow onto the page more smoothly and easily than others. What do you do when a story jams up? What do you do when you start writing and realize you aren’t going where you thought you wanted to go?

Let me use this blog post as an example: I originally intended to write it to highlight Andrea Hurst’s AUTHORNOMICS Interview Series, which features weekly interviews with literary agents, editors, authors, marketing experts and more talking about their opinions on the publishing industry, writing, and what a writer needs to know. I wanted to tell you how valuable it can be to learn from experts in other genres as well as your own, and I wanted to alert you that I’m featured in an interview this week.

But that’s not enough to fill an entire blog post, so I decided to add a few more resources, for example a link to Kathy Pooler’s blog, Memoir Writer’s Journey. Kathy is a walking Wikipedia for life writers, with more resource links per post than anyone I know.

Jerry Waxler’s blog, Memory Writer’s Network, is crammed with wisdom and writing lessons gleaned from his deep study of over a hundred memoirs. He includes dozens of author interviews.

I could fill many pages with links to rich blog sites like Shirley Showalter’s Discover the Power of Writing Your Story, or SuziCate’s Water Witch’s Daughter, one of the finest and most consistent examples of scintillating description I’ve found. Linda Joy Myers’ Memories and Memoirs is full of great tips, along with the Women’s Memoirs site.

I save one of the best for last: the National Association of Memoir Writers. I saved this one for last because I hope you’ll click over to learn more about the 3-week NAMW short course I’m offering, beginning next week: Soaring High and Digging Deep: Tools for Refining Your Memoir, which I mention in the AUTHORNOMICS Interview.

That last link brings me back around to my original intent of discussing what to do when your story doesn’t go where you intended: Let it take a detour. Write around the log jam – or through it. If you encounter a flock of sheep on a New Zealand road, unless you plan to sit there for an hour, you must keep moving, very slowly, until you work your way through. You might later edit out extraneous material after you write to the other side, or perhaps you’ll find it has value after all, and leave it in. Today I cut a lot, but left in links I have been meaning to feature, “when the time is right.”

A second alternative is to set aside your keyboard and linear writing in favor of more visual ways of exploring and organizing memories and meaning. I’ve written a number of posts on some of these tools in the past, but reading about them and using them are two different matters. In the Soaring High and Digging Deep class, you’ll have the opportunity to discover their power by using them yourself and share your experience with others to learn even more.

To find out more about the class and memories in general, join me on February 9 on the free NAMW February Roundtable: Memories are Made of This … or Are They? Click here to sign up.

Write Now: Pull out a story you’re jammed up on and write aroudn your logjam. Just freewrite about it and see where you go. Surprise yourself. You can throw it away later, or you may find a gem. Try a tool like inner dialogue,  mind-mapping, or asking yourself questions. Sign up for the class and get help as you practice using new tools.

Photo credit: Susan Mack