December 2017

What not to write

When we embark on writing our memoirs, we do not need to interview members of your family – not formally, at any rate. No-one will be very pleased to think that you are writing your memoirs and listening to their stories for that. (They would probably prefer you were writing their memoirs for them.)

If you are ready and willing to write, but you are unsure about what is allowed or not allowed, perhaps these further tips about what not to write will help bring extra clarity.

Just because you are writing your memoir, doesn’t mean you have to tell the full story of every significant other in your life. You can’t, so just select the parts of those lives which intersect with your own, and which lend colour, interest and meaning.

Try to keep the details you borrow from other people non-contentious. You do not need to tell the story of your cousin’s murder, unless it directly impacted your life. You may have had a life-long bond and ended up truly traumatised by her death, but if not, please resist the urge to borrow colour from the lives of other people. They will not be amused.

If something needs explaining, perhaps you have not laid the ground firmly enough. Go back and rewrite your material at least a dozen times, to check and prove it for consistency and clarity.

Remember that readers do not have your context, so avoid clichés, private language, and be prepared to explain or elucidate with a few well-chosen words or phrases. Remember that your readers only know what you have told them from your book. Internal consistency is helpful.

It is normal to write 120,000 words and get rid of half of them. If in doubt about anything, delete and reconsider or re-write. You will not regret caution, but you will regret not being cautious enough. That said, a cautious approach does not mean cautious writing. Keep it flying!

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Caveats when writing memoir

Memoir means, memory, so, with that in mind, there are a few caveats to mention when writing memoir.

Sitting as it does on the bridge between pure fiction – novels – and fact, narrative non-fiction (as it is known in the trade) – memoir – has to tread a very careful line between what we reveal of our own lives, and what we borrow from other lives.

Bearing that in mind, tread carefully.

• Stick to your own path, and do not trespass on the paths of others, except where the details you borrow are unexceptionable – no one will care whether the dress that Aunt Jane was wearing at your fifth birthday party was pink or blue. That said, if you are writing about your fifth birthday party, there is always the possibility that you actually remember the dress in question.

• Continuity fictions should also be unexceptionable. In blending what you remember with what is likely to have happened but is in point of fact imagined, stick to benevolent details such as the time of day, school timetables, ordinary conversations and everyday situations. Your parents may have got divorced when you were twelve, and it may have cast a catastrophic blight over your adolescence, but you can only write about how that made you feel or act, not about the reasons for your parents’ divorce. Readers will not necessarily understand this nice distinction.

• On the other hand, you can write about the reasons for your parents’ divorce if you genuinely believe(d) that it was because of you, and have some interesting anecdotes to support that belief. You will be wrong – many children blame themselves for their parents’ divorce, and it is never the fault of the child, but the situation can offer interesting psychological slants.

• You do not have to tell the truth, when you write your memoirs. Memory is frequently mistaken. But if you are going to get it wrong, try, again, to explain that error in the context of juvenile misunderstanding, perhaps; or gird it round with the honesty of your belief. I honestly thought that Jake the gardener was Mum’s boyfriend, I saw them kissing once; is excusable, even if wrong. Mum and Dad got divorced because Mum had an affair with the gardener is not excusable. Generally, misunderstandings crop up because we are too young to understand the bigger picture. That kind of naivety is excusable so long as it is obvious from the tone and tenor of our writing.

Thanks for reading!

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When all around you are saying No

It’s not so easy to write when there are other things to get done. When all around you are saying NO that truly tests whether we can persist with our writing.

Opposition is helpful. It empowers us to clarify what is important to us, and why. It helps us to articulate our reasons, and to defend our choices. So be grateful for the critics! But do not allow them to undermine your own authentic choices. (Not those decisions that are dictated by necessity and expectation, as much as those that colour our lives.)

It may not always be easy to know why, or indeed how, we should write. So, if you need encouragement, here are a few easy tips to help focus on the daily task of writing, and get some done each day.

When we are in the mood, we can write five words, and make them meaningful. Then we write the next ten. Then one paragraph, then a second, then to the end of the page. Just keep going to the end of the line, the next paragraph, and before we know it, we will have the equivalent of a short story, or the first chapter of a novel or memoir.

I started writing because these pictures were coming into my head that I could feel and taste. As I allowed that process space to unfold, gradually, scenes from my past opened up to me as I was writing, and brought with them a vast store of memories I had forgotten, in sequences that may not have been perfect, but were a good place to start. Perhaps that will happen to you, or perhaps you will find that the information comes to you as you write words on the page.

What matters most is the decision and the follow-through.

Thanks so much for reading!

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