Writing a memoir, as I’ve mentioned before, can be daunting—trying to wrangle together all of those pertinent memories and reduce them to a written form that, hopefully, does them justice, determining what should and, maybe more importantly, shouldn’t be included, and presenting it all in a way that is concise, precise, personable, and relatable.
Just thinking about it is enough to knock the wind out of you. Believe me, I understand.
Writing a memoir is no joke, nor should it be. It should be taken seriously, but not so much so that you scare yourself out of writing it or you end up producing something that fails to share your actual story with your chosen audience.
In an effort to help you in that regard, here are a few tips that I hope will make your preparation a little easier. These tips are intended to be just that—little tidbits to consider as you contemplate the writing process. They are not intended to function as a complete how-to format for memoir writing, as there are a number of articles on the Internet that address that thoroughly.
Tip #1 — Discover who you are
As important as it is and as challenging as it can be to eke out your life story, it still starts with finding out who you are and considering how your life experiences have played a part in morphing you into your current iteration. You don’t need to have yourself entirely figured out—no one this side of heaven has the ability to do that. But you should have a fairly well-rounded, hefty understanding of who you’ve been and who you’ve become.
Note: Figuring out who you were and who you are currently is something that is ongoing and will likely continue throughout the writing process, so stay open to that and don’t rush or limit it.
Tip #2 — Decide what you want to convey
Give some substantial time and effort to thinking about what you want to convey. Do you want to discuss the time when you prepared for and ran your first marathon? Or maybe a challenging time in your life when you lost a number of loved ones and found yourself fighting through an overwhelming sea of grief? Or possibly the journey you embarked upon to get your first book published?
Whatever it is, it should be personal to you, something you feel passionately connected to, and something you can write about in a way that will grip your readers and usher them along on your adventure.
To accomplish this, it might be helpful to make a running list of different life experiences (and the relevant details that accompany them) that come to mind. And once you have a decent-sized list, review it, noting any recurrences, common elements, experiences that seem more substantial than others, etc.
Note: This will go hand in hand with setting the timeframe to be covered, which we’ll discuss a little later.
Tip #3 — Select your theme
Consider the main idea that threads throughout the information you seek to share with your audience. It may be something like the idea that faith over fear is essential when navigating hard times, or that time itself doesn’t heal all wounds, or even that love really does conquer all. Whichever idea holds your experiences together, it needs to be front and center in your recounting of your story.
Tip #4 — Set the timeframe
Determine the time period that you want to cover, whether it be three especially traumatic months of your life, five years that have made a significant mark on you, or even a decade that has noticeably shaped your experiences.
There is no set time that should be selected, but it should be a specific span of time that is significantly less than the full duration of your life up to now, as the exploration of your entire life should be reserved for an autobiography.
Tip #5 — Determine your audience
Give some thought to whom you expect your readers to be—their age group, education level, reading style and habits, cultural backgrounds/differences, etc.—and how you might need to tailor your writing to reach them.
Tip #6 — Choose your language level
Have you ever picked up a book that on its face seemed like it would be engaging and relatable and was touted to contain content that was right up your alley, in effect, perfect for you, only to open it up and discover a few pages in that the writing was so lofty and convoluted that you found it hard not to tune it out completely?
I’ve been there, too. It’s not a good place to be.
And I imagine that you don’t want your readers to find themselves in that place either. So I caution you to consider your target audience when determining the level of language you will use.
Tip #7 — Ask yourself if you are ready and able to be transparently honest
We’ve all heard about memoirs that people, some of us included, have read and loved only to later find out that the memoir was erroneous or flat out false. And we remember how deceived and violated we felt, and how being the victim of those authors’ deception robbed us of a bit of trust and appreciation that we used to extend to writers, especially those of memoirs.
Writing a memoir requires you as a writer to truthfully and respectfully share accurate information with your readers, knowing that the relationship between writers and readers is special, and necessitates a heightened level of honesty in order for it to be developed, nurtured, and remain intact.
These are just a few things to keep in mind as you contemplate writing your own memoir, as this list of tips is not exhaustive, but is rather a small sampling to, hopefully, get the fires going.
As always, I’d like to hear your thoughts. Be blessed. #sanguinemango
Sanguine Mango 