Real Writing, Rough or Polished?

Authenticity is a big issue for lifestory and memoir writers and daunting to consider. Which is better and more authentic, those first rough drafts, or stories you’ve polished to a flawless sheen? After wrestling with this question for a seeming century, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are both authentic and real.

A family example

My mother began writing her autobiography late in her life, and her health failed before she finished. After her death, I pulled a thick folder of drafts and notes into a coherent, unpolished, story that gives a comprehensive picture of her life before she met my father. I shudder to think how much would have been lost if she’d spent time polishing!

My father is the opposite. He polishes every word. His stories are magnificent, and we have a dozen of his hundreds.

If you focus on facts and creating a legacy of history, rough works. If you focus on art, polish matters. In my opinion, both are authentic. Rough reflects honest effort to connect. Polish reflects dedication to order and esthetics.

Rough serves well to convey passion and spontaneity. In an earlier post, “Stories Around the World,” I wrote about LifeMemo.com, a site rich with real stories from everywhere. I keep going back. Raspy rawness in those rough outpourings moves me intensely. Strong emotional connection clings like a cocklebur.

Polish slides smoothly into my heart with incisive focus. Poetry may fly over my head, but lyrical phrases in poems or prose resonate within me like fine crystal bowls.

Both work. The key to the power in either case is to write from your heart. No hedging, no hiding. If you are going to write it, write it! The message I get from raw writing is that those people trust their message enough to put it out there “as it is,” messiness, and all. Like poetry, not all messy stories work, but heartfelt stories transcend messiness.

Polished writing clarifies and refines the message. Many find joy in finessing a phrase with robust writing skills. We want to tie silken word ribbons around readers’ hearts. We study, seek feedback from multiple sources, and practice until fingers and minds grow numb.

Raw writing gets memories out where they can be seen, shared, and analyzed. Polishing stories develops insight and refines your view of the world. Investing the effort to grow as a writer delights readers and shows your dedication in developing your gift.

Lumps of raw coal provide warmth, power and comfort. Diamonds delight. In the end, I see it much like the difference between Sunday singers’ heartfelt hymns and operatic arias. Each has a purpose and place, and each appeals to different tastes.

Based on my family example, if you must choose, and you have any descendants, I urge you to focus on rough quantity first. After you’ve assembled that legacy, be creative. Edit and polish to your heart’s content.

Write now: read stories on LifeMemo.com, paying close attention to how they affect you. What elements do you most strongly connect with? How can you tap into that power in your writing? Pay back the pot by leaving a simple story of your own for the global tribe.

How Do I Start Writing My Lifestory?

“I want to tell my grandchildren about my life, but when I sit down to write, my hand freezes and no words come  out. I don’t know where to start or how to do it. What can I do?”

“Do you use email?”

“Yes.”

“Try this: Open a new email message and write a long email to your grandchildren. Start at the beginning. Tell them when and where you were born and who your parents were. Then start telling them about things you remember from early in your life. Tell them what things looked like and what you thought and felt about them, why they mattered. Write about friends you had and important people in your life. Just keep writing, talking from your heart in email, just like they were sitting there with you. You can send the email, or copy it and paste it into Word. Or both. Can you do that?”

“Yes, I think I can do that. That sounds easier than writing stories!”

When people hear that I teach and write about life story writing, confusion often tumbles out. Many people have tried this email approach with good results. A few write by hand, sometimes on stationery – remember that lovely old letter paper? That works too.

Something about writing letters seems less intimidating than writing a story. You can keep using to write more stories, or switch to Word.

I included dozens more tips for getting started in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, like  setting up a folder in My Documents (or wherever you keep your Word documents) named “Life Story” or something similar. Save drafts of your stories in that folder so you can find them later.

For now, don’t think about editing. Keep writing and adding to the pile. This is one time that quantity trumps quality. Rest assured that you are always going to start with rough drafts. Even professionals with decades of writing experience write messy first drafts, so you are in good company.

The reason for quantity is to capture as much as you can while you are able. My mother began writing her life story around the time she turned 70. Her health soon declined ending her writing. After she died, I found piles of notes and drafts. I had to piece them together, but we have a complete record that stops just when she met my father. We can fill in the rest, but the early stuff was totally new. If she’d stopped to polish early drafts to a shine, those fascinating stories would be lost.

If you need help remembering or knowing what to write about, Google “lifestory writing prompts.” You’ll find a million.

Now, get those fingers moving!

Write Now: whether you are just starting or you’ve been writing your lifestory or memoir for years, open a blank email window and write about your birth and first year. Everything you write will be from records like your birth certificate and from hearsay. That’s okay. Write it the way you heard it, and include any thoughts it brings to mind. You may be surprised what comes out in this informal setting.

Memoir: Process or Product?

With any form of expressive writing, from spontaneous journaling to polished, published memoir, the writing process produces 90% of the benefit, at least as far as the writer is concerned.

To be clear, this 90% figure is an intuitive assessment, but not a wild guess. I extensively studied the healing value of expressive writing and wrote about it in a series of blog posts, Writing for the Health of It. I also base it on a stream of student comments that stories they wrote for class shed new light on past events, changing their perspective.

This may be especially good news if privacy concerns deter you from writing. It’s okay to write for a readership of one. In fact, that may be your healthiest, most gratifying course of action. You’ll get  most of the value even  if nobody else ever sees a word of it.

In fact, if your story upsets others, the resulting controversy and turmoil may offset the proven benefits of writing. You are well-advised to use caution when you have doubts how your story will be received. Carefully weigh your risks and benefits, and don’t risk what you’re unwilling to lose.

Other reasons people avoid publishing are more pragmatic. When you put your life on public display, you want clean copy. You want it to make sense and be free of embarrassing typos and simple grammar errors, and you want it to look nice on the page. You want it to look professional, without sacrificing authenticity.

Moving from draft to polished publication is a daunting task. Not everyone wants to exert that degree of effort. Not everyone knows how or wants to learn. You can pay people to edit your story and make it look like a million dollars. That’s like investing in custom framing for a picture you painted – nice if you can afford it. With diligent promotion, you may recoup some of the cost of professional assistance, but it’s not prudent to spend more on publication than you can afford to write off.

Finishing the draft of a memoir pays huge dividends. Polishing it pays more. The more you ponder story elements, which to include and how they interrelate, the deeper your insight and sense of meaning become. The more you study the craft of writing and contemplate  fresh ways of describing people, places and experiences, the more open you become to the world around you.

Whether you do it to contain costs with group editing or for the fun of it, joining a lifestory writing group or class provides further benefits as you bond with others and enhance writing skills through the power of story and collaboration.

Everything to the point of uploading your file to a printer is part of the process. When you choose to share your story with others, whether it takes the form of a rough stone or a polished gem, the process still holds most of the value for you. You may eventually reap huge  royalties, but whatever the financial rewards, you have created a historical document that others will treasure. That’s a mighty sweet cake. Inspiring others piles on icing – your gift to the world.

What is your aspiration? Process or product? How do you view this reward balance?

Write now: pull out your Story Idea List, select a topic and write that story!

Merging Life with Fiction

Today we have another international visitor, and a topic with an unusual twist. Mary Hamer explains how writing a historical novel, Kipling & Trix, gave her the opportunity to creatively showcase some personal experience in a setting that may be a more effective than memoir. Read on to learn how this is relevant for memoir writers.

It’s a challenge, writing memoir, to make all the other characters interesting, not just darling moi. One that’s especially hard when we’re writing about experience that’s been difficult or painful. How to give a rounded account, how to keep a balance? Avoid presenting ourselves as the sad victim or proud hero? As readers we all know what a turn-off that can be. And yet we want, we need to write into those painful experiences we’ve had to overcome. They’ve helped to make us who we are.

And they’re powerful: young film-makers in LA used to be told to think of the worst thing that had ever happened to them: and then find a metaphor for it, make a film about that. I’ve got a tip rather like that for memoirists. An exercise you might find helpful. It comes out of my experience of writing Kipling & Trix, my novel about the writer, Rudyard Kipling and his sister, Trix. When I realised that I too had been through an early experience that marked them, I felt I had what it took to tell their story.

Let me explain.

When these two were small—he was just coming up to six and she was three—their parents left them with strangers and went back to India. They meant it all for the best: India’s climate and fevers were dangerous for European children. All the British sent theirs back, if they possibly could. What was unusual in the case of Ruddy and Trix, though, was the treatment they got from the foster-mother their parents left them with.

This woman introduced terror into their lives. When she threatened them, vulnerable as they were, with Hell and the eternal flames in which they would be punished, how could they not be overwhelmed? They’d never heard of Hell, or heaven, for that matter. I’m sure the woman believed, like their parents, that she was acting in the children’s best interests, though she can’t have had much of an instinct for childcare or much understanding of her own desire for power and control.

We have testimony concerning the damage this caused. At the age of seventy, writing his own memoir, Something of Myself, Rudyard Kipling was bitter about the fear and confusion planted in him at that time. His sister, Trix, never recognised her own confusion. Worse, she lived it and acted it out. You don’t have to be a therapist to make a connection between the impact of those early experiences on a developing three-year-old brain and the string of later breakdowns that Trix suffered.

As a child, I too had shared a similar experience, though it was decades before I understood how it had affected me. Then, at a time when I’d been working on a book about trauma, so knew enough to take them seriously, I had a flashback. Until then the memory of my Irish mother teaching me about Hell when I was small had always been quite neutral. Without warning, the emotion which had been missing from that memory returned and I found myself dizzy with shock, disoriented, lost. I was back in the body and mind of my five-year-old self.

From that moment, I knew the power of such teaching to undermine. Imagine then how I sat up, reading Kipling’s angry memory of being subjected to the same experience! I’d been studying his life, wanting to write about him but not sure whether I could find anything new to say. There are several excellent biographies. I certainly hadn’t fancied adding to them—all those footnotes! Now I had a new and original angle. One that made sense of Kipling’s lifelong battle with depression and his compulsion to write, to imagine his way out of pain. I decided to write his life in the form of fiction so I could position readers to enter his inner world and understand him from the inside.

I found his sister’s experience just as compelling. Trying to repair ourselves by writing seems to be instinctive. Like her brother, Trix wanted to write. She did succeed in publishing two novels with a number of stories and poems. But over time she lost confidence in her own voice. As a woman writer it was all too easy for me to identify with Trix. Inventing scenes of exhilaration and passages of writer’s block came readily! But I do believe that the story I’ve told about Trix in my novel, tracing her long struggle, is more powerful, more just to the trouble she caused and above all more interesting than any doleful account of my own fight to keep writing.

So where’s the tip for you memoirists out there? Look around. See whether there’s someone else’s story that resonates with your bad stuff. Try telling their story, instead of your own. You could make it an exercise: just a scene, a passage of dialogue. Make it really embodied, concrete, not just inside heads. You may discover fresh perspectives. Better still, you might decide that their story is something you could tell really well, using what you know from your own experience. Why not run with that?

Mary Hamer was born in Birmingham, UK. She has published four books of non-fiction, having spent years teaching in the university. She is married, with grownup children and seven grandchildren. Kipling and Trix is her first novel, and it received the Virgina Prize for Fiction in 2012. Mary’s website: http://mary-hamer.com/

Don’t Call Me Mother

Linda Joy Myers’ memoir, Don’t Call Me Mother, is a rich read for many reasons, and one you won’t want to miss. Aside from the gripping storyline and heart-warming ending, her brilliant description makes the story blazingly real and compelling. Her technique is worth studying.

For starters, she uses evocative phrases like “The silent air between them heats up like a hot wire” and “I fall asleep wrapped in cottony dreams, breathing in the scent of my mother.”

She uses emotions and perceptions to convey a powerful sense of her inner life, for example,

They all stand around as if there’s an elephant in the garden everyone’s determined to ignore. Bernie stands back, her dark eyes flicking back and forth.

She masterfully uses action as a descriptive element, for example

Afterwards, Mother and Gram talk-fight all afternoon, chain smoking until the room fills with gray. Edith drops a bowl on the floor; Blanche pokes her finger with her embroidery needle. The men try to take refuge in outdoor work, but Mother follows them for a flirtatious tour of the mink pens, a scarf over her nose.

She includes intangible elements — what she senses or reads between the lines, and what she is feeling.

On the last day at Grandpa’s, I feel shaky inside, already missing them.

I have a lump in my throat as Bernie helps me pack the tiny doll clothes she made for me.

It’s clear she doesn’t want to know too much, and I’m sure the truth would worry her. I sense that she’s genuinely grateful that Gram is taking care of me because she simply wouldn’t know how.

Most of us find it challenging to get back into moments that happened maybe fifty years ago fully enough to capture details so vividly, so I’ve asked Linda Joy to share tips she has found effective.

Memoir Writing Tips from Linda Joy Myers

1. Research the sensual details—weather, location, setting, temperature, sound, sight—of your memoir. I went back to Oklahoma during the early summer to see if what I remembered about the wheat—the color, the landscape, the smell—was the same. It was!
2. Genealogical research helped me to get the names and dates straight in my memoir—and I did it before ancestry.com came onto the scene. Good old fashioned research from primary sources like courthouse records can reveal surprising details.
3. Write, rewrite, and rewrite some more. As I wrote my book, I had to surrender to the writing and rewriting process, and came to love the fact that a revision meant I could "see again" what I'd written before, and make the world I was creating on the page more real and well-rounded.
4. Once you get the "facts" clear that you want to share with your reader—otherwise known as your "truths," you look for poetic and metaphorical language, a fresh way to see what you already know, and bring it to the page. Don't be shy about this. Close your eyes and use your imagination, tune into your right brain, and write.
5. If you have dramatic moments you remember from childhood—in my case it was the feeling and sound of the powerful trains that brought and took away my parents—research these details as well so you can feel them again in your body. I would stand near train tracks, while preparing to take the train!—and absorb the feeling of the train's arrival, feeling much as I did as a child, exhilarated, vibrating, bowled over by its power. That helped me to write about trains with a refreshed sense of experience.
6. Think of yourself as a painter, and the writing, especially description, as the paints and colors on your canvas. Visualize each scene in full color, choose your words as if they are colors.
7. If you are writing from a child's point of view, close your eyes and remember as much as you can from being a smaller, more vulnerable person. Look at photos of when you were small. Notice how delicate and small children are, even at age 8 or 9.
8. Write from photographs—evoke all the emotion you can to drive you through the powerful scenes in your memoir. Remembering, imagining, and dreaming are close cousins.
9. Fall in love with your Thesaurus. I went over every paragraph with it in hand, and looked up lots of words to find the best fit that was evocative.
10. Be willing to feel tired, discouraged, and then buoyed up by the writing process. You need to have the long view about writing a memoir. Some days it's fun, and other days you just feel the weight of it all, but in the end, it's all worth it!

Thank you, Linda Joy. Your story is so compelling I know nobody will want to stop to analyze as they read, but writers can use your list as a short course in description writing as they scan back over the story a second time.

Linda Joy Myers, PhD, is Founder and President of the National Association of Memoir Writers and author of The Power of Memoir and other books. Visit the NAMW website and read her blog, Memories and Memoirs.

Write now: write a short story and incorporate at least four of Linda Joy’s tips as you write the description in it. Use these tips to revise an older story.

Story Around the World

Today it is my privilege to feature an interview with  Tanya Preminger, a resident of Israel, who created and manages Life-Memo.com, a website jam-packed with slices of life from the four corners of the earth.

Tanya recently contacted me about the possibility of trading web-links. When I visited her site, I was profoundly moved. Wanting to forge a stronger bond with her work, I invited her to tell you more about her site.

I have spent hours reading selected stories there. Each is profoundly touching. Although some are light-hearted, many are heart-breaking, filled with darkness, despair and fear that most in more privileged parts of the world prefer to avoid dwelling on, lest we feel guilty, helpless or depressed. You can’t read these stories and remain unchanged, even if all you can do is send compassionate thoughts and prayers.

The Life-Memo site is powerful testimony to a belief shared by many that Story is the key to helping people across political and cultural boundaries realize that “what happens to one, happens to all.” As growing numbers become attuned to a united beat within the heart of shared Story, the craziness must end!

I urge you to spend time on Life-Memo.com. Read the stories listed below and keep exploring on your own. Leave comments. Contribute stories yourself. Your heart will be bigger and stronger for doing so.

And now, Tanya’s story:

What led you to start Life-Memo.com?

I was always fascinated by people's life stories. What led them to where they are, what led them to be what they are, how they were as children, what life has brought their way. Peoples' paths are different, but we all share the same feelings, troubles and hopes.

The last trigger was when my both grandmothers reached 80 and wrote their memories, and I discovered their inspiring survival stories which I wasn't aware of all my life. Their stories were the first stories in life-memo.

How long have you had the site up, and how has it grown and evolved over time?

I stared planning Life-Memo in 2007, but the site was up only in 2009.
I did the design, the user interface, and the architecture. I even collected and wrote the first 10 stories myself. The site slowly developed naturally. Today there are 351 public and private stories from 27 countries.

What are your hopes and dreams for Life-Memo?

I hope the site will grow and have more stories from different countries. I hope that the stories will be meaningful and will enrich and open the minds of its readers and bring them closer. And, of course, eventually – world peace?

How many countries are represented by Life-Memo writers?

So far, 27 countries. Two biggest major contributors are the US and Pakistan. The US has 133 stories, I guess because it’s the largest speaking English country. Pakistan – I suspect that some 6th grade school teacher in Pakistan discovered the site and gave his students an assignment to write a story in Life-Memo. So the site has 177 stories by 13 years old Pakistani kids.

Tell us about a couple of amazing stories people have submitted.

There are many courageous and inspiring stories, a few which are so horrible I can't decide if they are true or made up.

• Amazing medical recovery and survival / USA:
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Ana-Orozco/United-States/117

• Family history- glimpse of old times in America / USA:
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Bob-Elliott/United-States/39

• Coming of age in Iraq / Iraq
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Hassan-Selman/Iraq/71

• Why I hate alcohol / Australia
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Leanne-Bakker/Australia/41

• A survivor of abuse, fighter against clinical depression / USA
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Jade-May/United-States/349

• Dysfunctional family / Ireland
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/jennie-leigh/Ireland/120
• Don't open the door to strangers / Tunisia
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/kahri-ferid/Tunisia/25
• Losing your mum / UK
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Michael-Morgan/United-Kingdom/30
• Personal account of the Ugandan massacre / Tanzania
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Arif-Meghji/Tanzania/285
• Jewish holocaust /Austria
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Nathan-Preminger/Austria/12

How can readers get involved?

Users can read stories, or write their own. They are invited to enjoy stories and share them in Facebook or Google Plus posts. It's all completely free at http://life-memo.com. Thank you Tanya, from the bottom of my heart, for your vision and efforts on Life-Memo.

Tanya Preminger is a writer, a web developer and an internet entrepreneur. She was born in Moscow and lived in New York City. She currently lives with her partner and six-year-old son in Israel, where she works in internet marketing.

Write now: think of some aspect of your life that would interest people around the world. You might want to share some of your fears, hopes for the future, or simple childhood memories. Maybe you have stories to inspire dreams and hopes of freedom. No preaching – just heartfelt experience and reflection, please. Write the story and post it on Life-Memo!

It Takes a Village to Bring a Story to Life

I never read Hillary Clinton’s book, It Takes a Village, but the title stuck with me, and in recent months I’ve realized how relevant it is to writing, especially life writing.

Last week I shared a story with a writing group and received several ideas for ways to improve it. This morning as I prepared to revise the draft, I had a moment of brilliant clarity, realizing that:

I would never keep writing if I had to do it alone. Yes, the act of transferring words from mind to paper requires a certain degree of isolation, but without feedback from others and the hope of eventual readers, I would be soon lose interest.

I learn from the examples of others. My writing continues to evolve and develop as I read and critique stories written by others. Beyond that, my understanding of life and the human spirit grows and evolves as I read an endless variety of life stories and memoirs, especially in groups.

My best writing results from collaboration. My recent experience polishing The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description dispelled any doubt about this. The keen eyes of numerous writing buddies kept me from embarrassing myself and inspired improvement in the material between those covers. And so it will be with the story I mentioned earlier.

My village makes things happen. Call it a village, call it a tribe. In our new age of indie publishing, writing villagers band together to trumpet the news of new arrivals they help deliver. Villagers write reviews. They host guest posts. They tweet.

Sharing stories build bonds. Whether it’s a long-term group like the Monroeville Library Life Writers, a class lasting a few weeks, or an online forum, people who share stories care about each other. Nothing bridges gaps of different backgrounds, ethnic and national origins, religion, gender and other culturally imposed boundaries faster than sharing stories. Stories move from heart to heart, evoking strong levels of compassion and caring.

Story knows no boundaries. Today stories travel around the globe with something approaching the speed of thought. Yesterday I read heart-grabbing stories written by people living in Iraq, Egypt, Romania,  and England and exchanged emails with writer friends in England, Israel and Australia. Someone in Japan ordered my book. I will never meet these people face-to-face, but we know each other as our hearts touch through shared stories.

I am part of a vibrant, thriving writing village. Many of my fellow villagers are working on book manuscripts. Those books will be stronger and more polished, and they will be read more widely because of the help and input of others in the village. Some write for the sheer joy and challenge of doing so, and to create a legacy of personal and family history for their families. In either case, the village is a safe place to hone skills, unravel personal mysteries, and find cheerleaders to keep our fingers flying.

This village can change the world. As stories build bonds, they feed a growing awareness that “what happens to one, happens to all.” They bring a sense of urgency and personal involvement to every corner of the globe. Just as pendulum clocks standing against a shared wall begin to tick in unison, so hearts bonded by story entrain and unite. Soon, I hope very soon, Story People of the global writing village will collectively cry out, ENOUGH ALREADY! And nightmares of oppression will finally end.

Write now: Let YOUR story be heard. Join a writing group, locally or online – or both (use the gadget in the sidebar to join the free Life Writers’ Forum). Email copies of stories to friends and family. Submit to anthologies or local papers. Start a writing group at your library, church, senior center or other community location. (Send me an email and ask for a free copy of my facilitator guide for starting these groups). However, wherever, let your story be heard!