Writing a memoir

Writing a memoir is similar to planning a special occasion like a celebration. There are many aspects of the event to plan and carry out. A celebration pleases its participants, yet it is a very practical undertaking. Creativity is balanced with feasibility; abundant possibilities are balanced with available time.

Use your creative talents to plan, write, and publish your memoir — a celebration of your life or even a small part of it. Let's work together to make the memoir all that your imagination wishes it to be.

Plan

The first step in planning a special occasion is to decide what, who, when, where and how.

The first step in planning a memoir is to decide what you will write about, whom you will write for, when you will write, where you will write, and how you will share your memoir with others. In the memoir itself, for example, you will begin by choosing a scope of events, a theme or metaphorical framework, a voice, and a format.

Create a supportive community by telling your family and friends that you are beginning to write your memoir - or, if you prefer, "some stories based on my personal experiences."

Mind the Details

Of course, challenges and satisfactions lie in myriad details. In the second step of preparing for a special occasion, we compile timetables, lists, charts, menus, programs, and arrangements. The content and logistics of a special occasion must work together.

The second step in preparing to write a memoir is to create a list of questions that need to be answered so that the content and logistics of the memoir will work together toward a pleasing result. For example, which metaphor or theme - as different as a journey, a work in progress, a moveable feast, a patchwork quilt, or even a three-ring circus - best fits the stories you wish to include? Do you wish to recount the stories in the first person or will you feel more comfortable telling them in the third person (as some famous memoirists have done)? In this era of multimedia formats, how conventional or unconventional will the memoir's packaging be?

Assemble

When someone asks you about the planned occasion, you may say, "Well, it's coming together." You are checking items off your long To Do List as you assemble everything you need for the big event.

Yes, a memoir is a writing challenge, but before that it is an assembly challenge. Eventually it exists on paper or in a multimedia format; before that its bits and pieces lie in folders, boxes, photo albums, journals and all the other humble repositories of your personal and family memories.

The creativity of contemporary memoirs is exhilarating. Some of the mementos that you handle at this stage of preparation may find their place in the memoir itself. (See Memoirs and related books for examples of highly creative memoirs.)



Make It Happen

If we are planning a special occasion, the time finally arrives to make it happen. Cooking, cleaning, arranging, and other tasks are involved in making it happen.

Making a memoir happen involves tasks with different names - writing, editing, and formatting, for starters. (When you are in the middle of these tasks, they may well remind you of cooking, cleaning, and arranging.)

Scheduling, outlining, and sequencing (SOS) are keys to converting energy and motivation into a successful product. If we undertake to write a memoir without SOS, our efforts may begin to stray and falter. Energy and motivation need to be replenished through continuous progress - even as little as a few pages a week when we are very busy. Choreographer and memoirist Twyla Tharp believes strongly that creativity is a habit, not a muse.

Present It

The essence of a special occasion is simple - "good friends, good food, and good times" - but a certain beauty and harmony in every aspect of the event make it even more memorable to us. Presentation matters.

Although word for word the same, the final draft of a memoir and its published version are different experiences for the reader. The strength of conventional publication formats is that they focus the reader's attention just on the story. The strength of unconventional formats is that they create, for example, a collage of experiences from page to page.

There is a best format for the content and tone of your memoir, but it may take some trial and error to discover it. You and your "editorial board" of friends or family will know it when you see it. Formatting is always the art of the possible, but many more formats are feasible and affordable now than in the past.

Enjoy

What's an occasion without guests? What's a book without readers? Share your memoir with family and friends. Start a website that announces your book.

Even if you publish your book commercially, you will need to carry out the majority of its marketing yourself through personal contact. Such is the nature of publishing today.

Sharing, promoting, excerpting, adapting, and making presentations based on your finished memoir are a pleasure (all right, sometimes a pain) that continues for years. The memoir - which is, amazingly, your life story in someone else's hands - becomes a force in your life. Your life is richer and different because it exists.