If your story is going to be memorable, it will have to engage the reader. The can happen more easily if you show how you yourself were engaged at the time of the events you are describing—that is, if you write a narrative of your internal life as well as a record of events.
As much as anything I can say, that paragraph gets to the heart of memoir writing. If your memoir shows what you once thought and felt, you will be showing readers what has made you a unique individual. You cannot write your story without talking about what you have done, what you have learned, and who you have known. But the most valuable insights into your past will come when you show how your reactions to the externals of your life are your own—how they differed from the way your neighbors would have reacted, or your schoolmates, or the people you work with.
Your readers should also recognize that you now understand events as you could not when they happened.
Interestingly, you may not know exactly what makes your story unique until you are well into it. When I started writing, I knew I wanted to examine the experiences that had led me away from the traditions and practices of my family. But it was not until I had been writing for several months that I discovered the main patterns that now run through the memoir. As I think of my life as music, I thought the shape of the fugue would be suitable for showing how events seem to repeat old themes, but with slightly different shapes and complex overlays of melody and color. The image has become especially apt for me in the memoir because I have had to reinvent myself more times than I could have imagined when I was younger.
The word “fugue” appears rarely in my memoir even though this musical image was in front of me for most of the time I was writing. A fugue involves the repetition of a theme, but in a new harmonic structure or against an altered rhythm. I use this image to stress my belief that much of life presents itself over and over again, either as repeated (but disguised) opportunities to learn a lesson or as second and third chances to get something right.
I also use other stylistic techniques to communicate my sense of the repetitiveness of experience—for example, I repeat words, even whole sentences, in different contexts. When this happens, I want the words to jump off the page. The reader should not have the impression that I have forgotten what I said earlier but should recognize that I have a reason for repeating myself.
While I intend this idiosyncratic device to remind readers of how I had previously used a phrase or a sentence, it should be equally obvious that the flavor and tone of the context have changed. The result should be similar to the layered, cumulative effect of a theme repeated in a sonata or a symphony.
Though I consciously used these techniques from the start, some other forms of repetition sneaked into my writing in ways I never realized until later. For example, the book was almost finished before I realized it was suffused with a leitmotif that had to do with memory itself.
When I consider my earliest recollections and my first influences—the family, especially my parents and their parents—it becomes easier to understand how I came to retain so many early memories. Remembering was important for me even before I knew it was important. It was part of my wallpaper.
When we are young, we know what we want mainly by looking at the examples around us. I could not have been unaffected by the models of learning all around me: my father the teacher, my grandfather the scholar, and the people they associated with. This was probably responsible for one of my earliest conscious impulses—the desire to learn, which was already present before I turned four. In addition, from an early age I was told that I had a good memory, and I was encouraged to remember more things.
For me, the process of becoming a person has usually involved learning something. Because I saw myself as a thinking being, my growth could not take place without learning. And now, writing about how I developed and changed as a person, I must try to explain exactly what it was that I learned. But, as Richard Saul Wurman points out in Information Anxiety, “The minute we know something, we forget what it was like not to know it.”
The writer of a memoir has the benefit of having already learned the things that are being described. But remembering everything means also recapturing and communicating the ignorance, even the embarrassment, of youth, and the naîveté of an earlier time of life.
This became even more of a challenge for me as my memoir grew because one of the key characteristics of the Gene persona I describe is a profound ignorance that takes new forms as it keeps coming back.
Writing is a solitary pursuit, and the most effective writers are motivated from within. Even though audience is a key ingredient in how you write, you can expect to be disappointed if you are writing primarily for other people.
I was not very concerned with audience when I began my memoir. I focused mainly on the material, and tried to write as complete an account as possible. As chapters were written, I sent the first drafts to my son and daughter and to a few friends.
Family and friends read my story with interest, but few offered comments that helped me as I wrote. At most, my children sometimes told me it was interesting to see how I interpreted some events that they saw very differently.
A number of people who heard that I was writing a memoir asked to read parts of it. Some of them even said that they had begun to write their own life story. But only one person ever offered any constructive comments. Most took the pages I offered them and never mentioned them again.
When people read your writing, they can respond either to what you say or to how you have said it.
People seem to have a limitless capacity to talk to you about how you have written your story. Few write, but almost everybody can criticize the writing of others. Thinking you will satisfy all your readers can only lead to frustration.
As for what you say, one of the things that distinguishes memoir from autobiography and history is the fact that it is based mainly on perception. The memoir writer establishes an unwritten contract of trust, implying that the descriptions are as close to the truth as memory allow. For their part, readers are usually not in a position to question the events described, and certainly not the emotions recalled. If they shared the circumstances of some experience, they must at least accept your perception of the event. Their own view of the past would be the subject of another book, and they are free to write it if they wish.
You may hope to entertain or educate or impress others with your writing, but satisfaction in the end can come only from yourself, from the complete rendering of the story you want to tell.
There may be no more intimate form of writing than memoir. But it can be effective only if it feels intimate to the reader as well as to you.
The first principle of communication is to know your audience. In memoir writing, this is especially important because your audience is a big reason that you are writing at all.
Do you want your parents to understand your excuses for some terrible life choices? Do you want your children to see why you always refused to move to a warm climate? Do you want to show your classmates that you have finally succeeded at something? Are you interested in showing your friends how you followed a convoluted path through six careers?
Each of these is a different goal, and each has a different primary audience. The facts you decide to present, the details you include, all depend on how you see this audience. They also determine how you present yourself—in technical terms, what your persona will be.
When Benjamin Franklin began his autobiography with the words “Dear son,” he assumed a persona that would have been very different if he had begun with an introduction addressed to James Madison.
It was not until I was well into the process of writing that I thought of tailoring my memoir for a wider audience than my children. Perhaps my experiences could be interesting, my struggles instructive, and my life lessons useful.
A number of people became a secret audience. As I worked, I often thought I might be remembered by and re-introduced to somebody who saw my name on a book cover or on the acknowledgements page of a publication I had helped put together. I had fantasies of being recognized at a highway stop by some intriguing woman walking out of my past. It never happened.
Your audience can never be far from your mind as you write. You must be aware of their interests, anticipate their questions, and fashion your words in such a way that they will feel as if you are talking directly to them.
I have thought of myself as a writer for most of my life, even during the years when I wrote no letters, no essays, no stories. I have always felt the capacity (the gift, my Franciscan friend would call it) in me, and I have felt most myself when I was using it to work out, or even just to clarify, some idea or issue.
On the other hand, at my worst I have felt like one of those hardened shells you find on the beach, which used to contain lots of interesting life and might still be able to contain much but which is in fact empty.
I have one friend who always encourages me to write. It’s a pleasure to hear from her even though she often has nothing to offer me but encouragement to carry on. Countless people have asked to see some of my writing, and most of them have then walked away from my life clutching a story or an article of mine. Months later, I remember them and feel abandoned. It sometimes feels as if all I have to do to get rid of somebody is give them a few pages of my writing. The more intense the writing, the more likely they will go away.
When I am writing without a sense of an audience, I feel like a cook ladling out small bowls of my own spicy blend of speculation and putting them on the window sill for whoever wants to drink. Every so often I feel stingy enough to withhold that gift when the silence from the other side raises the depressing possibility that I really have no audience and that I am writing for myself alone. I think of all the writers who wrote because there was something in their heart, not because there was somebody waiting to hear from them, and I wonder whether I write because I have something to say in the abstract, or if I really need the encouragement of an applauding audience. Does it matter if anybody is affected by what I write? If nobody is out there when a writer’s pen falls, do the words say anything?
These are not just whimsical questions. They are at the core of my being, and I think seriously about them. If you are a writer, you may have asked yourself the same questions every time you started to express yourself.
Do I want to be heard, or do I just want to shoot off my mouth—or my pen, as the case may be? At times I have told myself that I would write even if nobody paid attention, but I wonder whether I would continue to write if nobody paid me to do it, either with encouraging words or by sending bowlsful of their own lives back to me.
. . . a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision—he is merely responsible for the quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition . . . . A man is sure to fail at it, but there is something in the failure . . . (Stephen Crane)
Children sometimes try to defuse name-calling by chanting “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never harm me.” This is just wishful thinking, whistling in the dark—and it’s not true.
As writers we have a terrifying power to harm others. Names and other words can hurt the people we describe, and it sometimes takes an enormous effort to keep ourselves from saying unfavorable things about people we have known.
Judaism considers it so important not to harm others with words that some rabbis forbid saying anything about another person, even if it is complimentary. This is because people can always twist what they hear about others, and we have no right to play with anybody’s reputation.
If followed scrupulously, this principle would spell the end of memoir writing. But we do not have to go that far to realize how easy it is to injure somebody unintentionally.
Whether I am wearing my writer hat or my editor hat, I aim to express facts as accurately as possible, to have them reported truly. I try not to betray my vision of reality past or present. Like Stephen Crane in the words quoted above, I feel a responsibility for the quality of my personal honesty.
Writing about the past means writing about others. But I must never lose sight of the fact that the past sometimes leaves wounds that can be reopened even after time has obscured the pain. My personal integrity as a human being makes it important for me not to shame or embarrass the people I am writing about.
Many writing coaches can tell you about the legal implications of writing about others. To me, making people appear in a positive light is not a legal issue. My children and their mother, my classmates, relatives I grew up with, former colleagues—all of them are occasionally my subject; but some of them, and people who care deeply about them, will also be my readers. What I say about them will affect the way they are seen by others, so I must treat them as if what I say matters—as if they matter. More importantly, how I treat them will determine how the world sees my own capacity for understanding, appreciation, and forgiveness.
Professor Merton M. Sealts Jr., at the University of Wisconsin, taught me one of my most important lessons about writing—that you can tell as much about a writing style by what is left out as by what is put in.
Where memoir is concerned, I will go one step further: you can tell as much about writers by what they leave out of a text as by what they put into it.
As you set down your life story, there will be many times when you think this is finally the chance you have been waiting for, to tell your side of a story that has always been squelched, or to get back at somebody who was nasty to you, or to expose the people who were really responsible for that disastrous incident on the pier.
When this happens, remember that your words and your choice of details reveal things about you that you might not suspect.
You may have noticed how children are always learning, whether it’s what you are trying to teach or not. Similarly, your readers are always learning about you, whether it is what you are trying to tell them or not.
You may take a righteous stance as you write, and you may even feel justified in striking out at somebody, but your readers are as likely to remember that you are being vindictive as to recognize the wrong that was done to you.
Conversely, if you can use the painful incidents in your stepfather’s house as a way of describing your pain and resist the urge to make your memoir a soapbox for telling the world how insensitive the man was, your readers will see that you emerged from the situation as a kinder and more forgiving person than the one who hurt you.
In other words, even the things you do not say speak volumes about your character. If you want your readers to see the best side of you, think hard before you include anything about other people that could leave a negative impression.
A lure that trips up many autobiographers and memoirists is the rage for order and the urge to understand what in the end may not be understandable. Because memoir is in some measure a literary exercise, it imposes patterns on events instead of letting the patterns of life suggest themselves.
Even knowing all along that life is never as tidy as literature, I have found myself trying to paint an ordered picture of my disordered life. Luckily, I am also familiar with what many writers did to sidestep the trap of imposing meaning after the fact.
When I began to think there might be some symmetry in my life, I calculated the date when I would have lived in Canada as long as I had lived in the United States. It was August 6, 2000. In considering the significance of that date, I thought it might be an appropriate time for me to move on to the next place, whatever that might be.
The time came and went. I hesitated to call anybody’s attention to the date because it mattered only to me. And it did not change me or any of the ways I looked at life because life does not follow the artificial patterns we try to impose on it, any more than it follows our conceptions of justice or fairness or harmony. If life ever seems to have pattern and form, it is only after the fact, not because we have forced some artificial symmetry onto it.
The overall pattern of the memoir I have written (that is, the artificial pattern I have imposed on it as an object of contemplation) is that of a spiritual journey in reverse, with plenty of pat answers at the beginning and many uncomfortable questions at the end—just as they often appear in life. I move from encounters with the spirit world to a clash with matter to a confrontation with chaos. Following the pivotal center of that life-book—years in isolation from society and years as a single parent—comes a short stint as a civil servant, my first contact with the modern world in all its incomprehensibility. After that, a sharper nudge away from answers, my contact with what seemed to be trivial causes without visible effects—first a dismal experience as a writer and publisher, then a descent into the lowest level of corporate insanity.
Once I had decided upon the ultimate patterns of the memoir, I had to go back to the beginning and rework what I had already written so that it all held together. Just understanding the patterns I had uncovered meant beginning to deal with a book as much as with a life. I had a book about my family; a book about religion; about a career thrown away; about my inability (or reluctance) to fit into the 20th century. And I also had an examination of how I shed the 19th century environment I was born into, how I had taken a good look at the 20th—mainly as an observer—then lived in the 21st century without feeling comfortable.
The psychic process was painful. But writing is usually more work than fun, even when an inner compulsion drives me.
The instruction often given to memoirists, to write down everything you can remember, is of questionable value if your memory leaks.
You can’t expect to become a writer with perfect recall at the age of fifty or sixty. The ideal is to begin developing the discipline needed to write a memoir when you are a child.
Most people lack the foresight for that. But however old you are when you decide to write a memoir, you should start taking notes and write down anything that pops into your head. Talk to friends, relatives, colleagues, whoever shared your experiences. You will be amazed at how differently they remember the past, and you will also be surprised at how they help you remember other incidents.
When I began to write my memoir, I was lucky to have studied autobiography as an art form. I knew that what people say about themselves is only marginally—and sometimes even accidentally—related to whatever might be called objective truth.
My first aim was modest: I simply wanted to question the claim of an aunt who had said that her sisters would have the same memories of their childhood as she had. Instead of looking back and trying to reconstruct what had actually happened, I focused on what I could remember. As a fiction writer, I thought I understood the importance of properly selected details. Most importantly, I considered how my narrative would be changed if I could recall some things and not others.
I have tried to be honest about myself and have tried to use the memoir as a way of learning about the person I was. I soon became aware that my writing was projecting an image of self that was colored by my memories. I thought it would be better to project a conscious image than an unconscious one.
Eventually I saw patterns emerging. The things I remembered about my childhood showed that from an early age I had been a narcissistic, ego-driven academic in the rough, and that the psychological healing of my later life required getting rid of as much narcissism and ego as I could, and starting to pay as much attention to my emotions as to my intelligence.
Knowing all of this helped me refine my rough drafts, because I could then more carefully delineate the patterns I had discovered.
By the time I was 42 years old, I had lost most of the things that normally give people a sense of self. I had left the country of my birth. After spending years getting advanced degrees and teaching at a university, I had lost my way in the mists of academia and was persona non grata in the profession. In addition, although I respected the values of my family and the religion I had grown up in, I had rejected my family’s way of living as a Jew.
Most painfully, I was no longer a part of the family I had formed. I was a single parent of a difficult child, and my other children had returned to the United States with my wife. Gone were country, profession, religion, family—the things that most people use to get a sense of self.
Writing a memoir means making a conscious decision about how to appear in light of your experiences. Will you paint yourself as headstrong and stubborn, or will you play the victim?
You can spend all night debating how much free will you have in your life, but when you create the persona who will appear as your self in a memoir it is you alone who will decide how you are to appear to your readers.
Some of the changes in my life were obviously the result of conscious choices; I would gladly have avoided some of the others; but I could not deny that I had set all of them in motion.
There’s a strange passage in Exodus (21:13), outlining the recourse available for a person who becomes an unwitting agent of destruction, even of murder. The structure of the Hebrew sentence is curious: it does not say that the person has done something, but that God has caused something to happen to him.
Biblical commentaries note that there are always eligible candidates around to carry out God’s ugly business on earth, people whose lives need to be re-examined and straightened out. And they point out that to become an agent of evil is a signal to look at your own life to see how you can straighten yourself out.
These commentators are not Buddhist or Hindu; they dance around the idea of karma even within the context of traditional Judaism.
Memoir is not just a writing exercise. If you use your writing as an opportunity to examine your life honestly, you get a second chance to learn from the events that did not teach you when you were going through them.
It may make you a different person.
The essence of interesting narrative is the effective selection of details, and the essence of tedious narrative can often be traced to a writer’s inability to make that selection.
A memoir that grips readers from the start probably does not begin with a birth date and place, or a list of the people who made up a baby’s world. To draw readers into a story, a writer should include other basic facts of a life.
How much of a memoir should you give over to facts that you do not remember? Should you mention the date and place of your birth at all? Besides your mother, who will remember that morning whether you write about it or not?
Normally, your readers will want to know about the environment you were born into, the people who influenced you. My memoir does not begin with my birth—it does not even mention my birth but begins with a description of a certain personality trait in my father, one that helped shape me; it goes on to describe the family characteristics that made my parents the people they were. Those things give the reader some idea of who I have become even before I come into the story. My father and his way of thinking, for example, remain important to me today; it matters that literacy was first drummed into me by an immigrant.
Your birth might never be mentioned in your memoir, unless the circumstances were unusual. You might have been born at sea during a hurricane, for example, or in a cab during a blizzard, or in a war zone.
The facts of your life, such as you might put into a resume, are just a hook to hang your memoir on. A life story is a story; it goes far beyond the facts.
It is often said that all the early efforts of fiction writers are autobiographical. The more I study memoir, the more I understand how that happens. Some of my richest fiction-writing experiences have come from converting my memories into an alternate reality, from mingling my memories with daydreams from some unknown source deep inside until they became events that might have happened if I were controlling the world.
Not that it makes much difference: Fiction writers are not better than anybody else at remembering the past. In fact, their discipline has probably made them worse than most people at accurate autobiography. They become so accustomed to transforming their recaptured memories into a personal what if that it’s a wonder they can tell any true story straight.
It rarely matters whether fiction is based on autobiography or not. The results, the ultimate treatment of memory along with the work of the imagination, are far more important. In memoir, on the other hand, if the exercise is to be more than a fanciful delusion and at least an approximation of what happened, it is somewhat more important to get the original story straight first.
My memoir is a conscious reining in of fancy, an effort to get the what straight. It was not always easy, but I was lucky to have saved letters and other documents over the years. That put me miles ahead of writers who look for verification in the shaky—and necessarily biased—memories of their family.