One of the main issues I have found with
memoir writing is not lack of material, but rather too much. Each day has
moments worthy of notice and attention. If you add a lifetime of days together,
that is a ridiculously overwhelming volume of material to work with.
Another problem is, that although there are
moments from your life that are incredibly important to you on an individual level,
they may not be at all important to your memoir on a story level. So how do you
narrow your focus?
I heard a piece of advice (from a podcast I
listened to years ago and I can no longer find- doh!) that helped me enormously
in this process. The wise person said that she saw memoir as a piece of
non-fiction writing where you are making an argument for something, and your
life story is merely an illustration of the point you are trying to make. The
example she gave was that someone could write a memoir making the argument,
‘Life is better when you share it with a cat.’ You would then go on to draw
examples from your own life that demonstrated this.
I love the way this concept stops your
memoir merely being about you as an individual and broadens it into something
larger and richer. When I took her idea and applied it to my own book, it took
me months of driving myself bananas to come up with something that I thought
really captured what I was trying to communicate. I decided the ‘argument’ of
my book was: ‘If we don’t look after veterans, it is not just them, but their
families, who pay the price.’
This was a very effective way to separate
out the stories that needed to be included in my book from the ones that
didn’t. That’s not to say it was easy. Some of the stories I left on the curb
were favourites of mine. ‘Killing your darlings’ takes on a whole new meaning
when the story you are abandoning is very personal and intensely meaningful…
but it is necessary.
A memoir is not a journal. It is something
you are writing for an audience. If you can’t make tough decisions about what
belongs and what doesn’t, you will never create the clarity necessary to
transform a bunch of stories into a book.
What about you? What techniques have you
found helpful to help narrow the focus of your memoir?
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