I don’t understand memoir. How do people remember enough details about their childhoods to write a book.
How do memoirists know their memories aren’t lying to them?
Unlike much of nonfiction, most of our personal memories can’t be fact checked. I can look up what day in 1968 the construction of the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant was announced. I can fact check that date against regional newspapers from that era. I can explore the life of local hero Spurgeon Moss by talking to people who knew him. I can fact check these memories by visiting the Louisa County Historical Society.
But memoir is different.
Let’s say I wanted to write about my childhood. Let’s say I wanted to write about my experiences playing the flute in my elementary school band. I clearly remember that I chose the flute because “flute” and “drums” were the only two instruments I knew how to spell.
Clarinet? Saxophone? Sixty years later and I still have to spell check them.
I was a terrible musician.
My recollections are that I had a decidedly negative impact on my elementary school band. The only part I really liked was the uniform. I have a vague memory of being part of a marching parade.
I wore my uniform and played my flute. I only knew how to play one song: The Marine’s Hymn.
“From the Halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli; We fight our country’s battles In the air, on land, and sea…”
Have you ever heard a flute played horribly? It sounds like a rusty car door squeaking open and closed. I most certainly had no idea where the Halls of Montezuma or the shores of Tripoli were or why the US Marine Corp was fighting in either location.
Both, in fact, are fascination historical events worth a well-researched narrative nonfiction!
I can spot about six different half-finished crochet projects from my desk. It took me nearly ten years to complete my bachelor’s degree because I kept changing majors—and schools. And, for the past many years, I’ve been wrestling with a memoir.
Recently, I’ve been considering shelving that writing project.
Is it time to unravel that “sweater” or just set down the hooks for awhile? Image by Olliss via Unsplash
There are several reasons I’m contemplating letting that project go. Much of the story deals with trauma, and it’s tricky to sit in that energy while trying to also enjoy and balance the demands of my current life. Also, one of the primary reasons I was writing was to try to understand why a family tragedy occurred, and in the process of regular old living, it became clearer to me. And, in the past few years, I found an alternate way of creating resources that might be of service to people who’ve experienced sibling loss, which was one of my initial motivators to complete this memoir. Last but not least, I’ve been writing about this topic for decades. I’m curious to see what else might bubble up on the page.
But what about completion? What about the countless hours I spent writing and revising? What about stick-to-itiveness?
One thing I love about crocheting is that the stakes are low. If I mess up partway through a project, or get bored with it, it doesn’t really matter if I rip the stitches out or start a new project. As a recovering perfectionist, there aren’t very many places in my life where I let myself off the hook (pun intended) so easily, but crochet is one of them. The meditative state I enter when my hands are busy making something with the yarn and hook is a worthy pursuit, regardless of whether it results in a blanket.
Writing is an art, but I choose to not see it only as a commodity. Writing has been a survival tool for me. It’s how I attempt to make order from the chaos. It’s often how I learn what I’m feeling. Writing helps me frame and understand parts of my life that otherwise seem disparate.
Besides, one of the best parts of writing, to me, is the magic that happens when we show up to the page and we tap into something outside of our own minds.
From that perspective, all those hours I spent on that memoir weren’t wasted.
In the time I spent on my memoir, I grieved. I remembered. I made sense of. I tinkered.
I’ve also been doing a whole lot of living in between. I’ve been raising two kids and nurturing an almost 20-year marriage. I was able to be present and helpful through my dad’s illness and death. We have a dog and a mortgage, and I exercise on the regular. From this little list, perhaps I’m not actually a quitter.
Completion isn’t the same as commitment.
Maybe writing doesn’t need to be that different from crochet—it’s not the end of the world when I have to rip out stitches or trash the sweater project because it ends up looking more like an oven mitt. Maybe there’s freedom there. Curiosity. Openness.
But. There’s still one thread of the memoir that I can’t quite let go of. It’s about the amazing women who shepherded me through losing my brother, and how they basically taught me how to connect, get through the tough stuff and live a rich life. I’d like to find a way to tell it, though I’m not yet sure what that might look like. I’m looking forward to giving the story some space, letting go of the vision I had of it in my head, and seeing what might take shape.
Lynn Shattuck grew up in a Southeast Alaskan rainforest and is now a Maine-based writer. She’s a columnist at Elephant Journal, where she writes about grief, parenting and wellness. Her essays have been featured in Human Parts,Al Jazeera, P.S. I Love You, The Fix, Vice, Fabric, and Mind Body Green.
I’d been aware of the enigmatic document for years. But whenever I’d start to research how to write an actual book proposal, I got overwhelmed.
Besides, I was writing a memoir. While some agents and publishers liked a book proposal, I’d heard that most preferred the memoir itself. Why spend my time writing an overwhelming, difficult document like a book proposal that no one might read, when I’m already wrestling with a vexing memoir?
For years, like the proverbial person opening a closet door to peek at the disorganized stash within, I’d slam the book proposal door shut, vowing to deal with it later.
But recently, I decided to pursue an anthology project that I’ve been contemplating for decades. While it’s hard to get a straight answer about whether memoirists need a book proposal, for the book I had in mind—a nonfiction anthology—I definitely needed one.
As a writer, I love the magic of words. The feeling of transcendence when a piece of writing hits me on a soul level. Gleaming imagery and alliteration and striking metaphors.
I’m less keen on the salesy stuff.
My colleague and friend, Lisa Cooper Ellison, describes a book proposal as a business document that builds a case for the salability of your book. I was fortunate enough to take a class Lisa recently offered on writing a book proposal. Being among a group of other writers who were tackling this document was incredibly helpful.
Still, the process, at times, felt much like wading into a closet full of junk. Book proposals usually consist of several different sections, including an overview, a description of the target audience who’d buy the proposed book, a marketing plan, comparable titles, and sample chapters. When I started the class, I was particularly confused about the blurry borders between the target audience and the marketing plan. I also knew I’d made some mistakes as a writer— namely, I’d been inconsistent in building my author platform. Writing the proposal meant taking that out of the closet, staring at it, and deciding how to proceed.
With time, baby steps and Lisa’s fantastic teaching, I began to get a clearer understanding of the different sections of the proposal and which information needed to be included in each.
What I didn’t expect was for writing this beast of a book proposal to supercharge my enthusiasm about the project. I’d figured it would be a dull but necessary slog. But as I wrote and revised the document, blending my personal experience with statistics and research, and reviewed the sample chapters I’d compiled from contributing authors, that’s exactly what happened.
By the time I was ready to send the latest version of the proposal to my co-editor, I’d experienced a significant shift. The proposal became cohesive and convincing. It has an arc, and it clearly demonstrates that there’s an audience for this book. I even found a little room, in this starch-collared business document, for a little creativity, when I realized I could include social media screenshots that demonstrated high engagement on the anthology’s topic.
Writing a book proposal isn’t fun or easy, but I’ve grown to appreciate the value of the process. It wasn’t that different than creative writing—there were days when it all felt like a big mess that would never make sense, and there were other days when the words flowed, and I could see smidges of progress.
But perhaps more importantly, the process of writing a book proposal demands that we clarify what the book is about, why the world needs it now, who will buy it, and how we’ll reach that audience. It requires spending time with each item in the proverbial disaster closet and deciding what’s junk and what’s worth holding onto. And better yet, what’s worth fighting for.
—BACCA writer Lynn Shattuck grew up in a Southeast Alaskan rainforest and is now a Maine-based writer. She’s a columnist at Elephant Journal, where she writes about grief, parenting and wellness. Her essays have been featured in Human Parts, Al Jazeera, P.S. I Love You,The Fix, Vice, Fabric and Mind Body Green.
A coaching client of mine emailed the other day to ask why I hadn’t yet begun the “heavy lifting editing” on their book manuscript in progress. Turns out that previous experience with an editor had taught my client to expect cutting and pasting — or slashing and burning — from the start. My behavior wasn’t measuring up to the client’s expectations.
I got to thinking. I saw that, especially with this project, there are multiple kinds of heavy lifting involved in the collaboration between writer and coach, and they each have their own timing.
I reflected on where we were with the project and what had happened so far. They’d sent me 80 or so pages, and asked for an edit of the first portion of those. I did a line edit on those pages, with marginal comments and questions about structure and context. We met a couple of times to discuss these things, and to plan a working outline for the book. After those coaching sessions, the client requested time to think through some new ideas we’d brainstormed about the architecture of this book-length project, and the basic design of each section and chapter within it.
It wasn’t yet time for me to get into any heavy lifting. We were still defining what we were building. With several hundred more pages to write, the client was doing plenty of heavy lifting already.
Along those lines, my client also said: “I think after we get through this first chapter we will have a better idea of how to proceed in the future.”
With that thoughtful sentence, the client was exploring our working process. Makes sense, since they’ve never done this before. And we’ve never done this together before. They’re right about the “heavy lifting,” too — and there’s more than one kind involved for this project. It’s a good metaphor.
After reflecting on these things, I wrote back to the client: Yes, you’re right. I wait to move blocks of text around until I feel we both have a strong sense of the way we’re going to structure the book. For me, that kind of editing makes sense only when the overall architecture — the plan for the book — is clear. Once we have that in place, I’ll be glad to dig in and sling paragraphs around.
Another kind of heavy lifting
The paragraph-slinging I’ll be undertaking is one kind of heavy lifting. There’s another important aspect to this project. It’s the client’s first full-length book — a complex braid of memoir, the science of trauma, and wisdom — and it contains sensitive subject matter. So not only do they need to find the words and make the sentences, and organize them into chapters and sections with an overall arc, flow, and momentum — they also need to find the inner resources to develop and sustain an arms-length stance to the entire enterprise.
Writing about difficult topics from their own life, particularly those that are likely to trigger some members of the intended reading audience, this author has the extra challenge of distancing enough from their own past trauma and growth to be a clear communicator with a consistent perspective. Doing that involves building some strong muscles, and allowing for plenty of recovery time.
The inner work my client has already done — to be capable of this kind of writing — is impressive. That preparation has made it possible now to immerse in deep and painful memories, then surface enough to express in language things that have become possible to articulate, and then climb all the way out, shake it off, go to work, feed the cats, have supper with the spouse, etc. It’s a kind of heavy lifting that takes all the time it requires. From the pages I’ve seen, it’s already apparent that the client’s voice is clear. Their purpose is well defined. People will benefit from this work.
And another kind
Also, it’s the first time they’ve worked with a writing coach. As with any relationship, trust builds over time. We first met a few years ago, when they came to me for a quick creative boost. They had a short deadline for a presentation that needed some finishing touches. So initial trust was there, but now we’re developing a deeper working relationship. Things are going well, and we’re already making real progress defining the book and its architecture.
But last time I contributed the equivalent of a car wash and detailing for a vehicle that the client had already built and road tested. Compared to our prior work together, our process this time is more like designing and assembling an airplane. It makes sense for us to do this work on the ground, not mid-flight.
In short, a project like this requires several kinds of heavy lifting. The author has to bear the most weight, and for the longest time. You might say they’ve been carrying a lot of it their entire life. In fact, this writing project has the potential to lighten their load, if we proceed deliberately and with care. I’m really looking forward to doing my part.
— A M Carley writes fiction and nonfiction, and is a founding member of BACCA. Through Anne Carley Creative she provides creative coaching and full-service editing to writers and other creative people. Decks of her 52 FLOAT Cards for Writers are available from Amazon. Anne’s writer handbook, FLOAT • Becoming Unstuck for Writers, is available for purchase from Central Virginia booksellers, at Bookshop.org, and on Amazon.
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