From Journal to Memoir

“I have piles of old journals. Can I use those as my memoir?”

This question comes up in almost every class I teach. The short answer is “No. But you can use those journal entries as a resource.” Here’s why and how.

Take a look at the Tree of Life Writing image in the right sidebar. Notice that Journal Entries fall at the foot, below the ground, out of sight and light. Those journal entries feed into Story, that appears first as Essays and Stories. Those component stories and essays feed into the composite Memoir.

If you are using your journal to best advantage, you write with no boundaries. Your entries may ramble. They may not be coherent. You may omit detail or obsessively dwell on detail. You may write things that will send certain relationships up in flames if you don’t consign those pages to flames before anyone reads them. You may reveal things to those pages that would embarrass you or others, or betray their confidence.

But aside from all that, reading journal entries is usually boring or confusing  for anyone other than the author. In our journals we repeat things, perhaps to the point of obsession and stuckness. We report conclusions and assumptions. We nearly always confine journaling to “telling.”

So how do you convert that material?

Start with lists of key memories and arrange them on a timeline. Then pick one of those memories and find journal entries about that event or the general time period. Read those entries to refresh your memory about details. Use them to get back into the scene. You’ll probably need to sink back into the moment, because you probably didn’t record many sensory details, but recalling the emotions and actions you did record should help you recall the rest.

Write a story about that memory, adding details evoked by your journal entries. In the story you show the action. You describe the setting and other characters(remember, characters may include animals, inanimate objects, nature, place, or other aspects of yourself as well as other people). You use sensory details to get readers as fully involved with the situation as you were.

Your story includes action that ideally involves some uncertainty and tension or conflict. Dialogue is not an absolute requirement, but even if you are the only person around, you can include at least a bit. Have conversations with yourself.

Each sensory detail, each bit of dialogue and aspect of action activates an additional sensory area in readers’ brains and adds a layer of realism to your story, bringing it alive in readers’ minds.

One more layer of realism may come directly from your journal. That’s the element of reflection. Readers want to know more than what happened. They want to know what that meant to you, how it affected you. That’s where those journal entries come in.

On rare occasions you may want to directly quote journal entries. At times, quoting from your journal may add a touch more credibility to your reports of how you reacted at the time, and some snippets may be lyrical and compelling. Use these suggested guidelines to effectively incorporate journal material:

• Use them sparingly. Don’t let them be a crutch for “telling” rather than “showing.”
• Prune them to laser sharp  focus. Use ellipses (...) to show that you’ve omitted material before or after the quoted material, or even within.
• Create composite entries. Some people may have a problem with using journal entries that are not verbatim quotations. This is a matter of personal judgment. Many of us consider journal entries to be similar to dialogue. The intent of the message is more important than literal accuracy. So if you need to distill three or more entries into a single one to give the drift of your thoughts at that period of time, do so and avoid overwhelming readers with what may seem like tedious navel gazing.

So, yes, you can use your journals, but use them primarily as resource material rather than verbatim story elements.

Write now: scan through an old journal and find a juicy memory topic with several related entries. Immerse yourself in those entries to recall your sense of the times and your state of mind. Bring the setting into memory as clearly as you can and notice elements of the setting. What was going on? What were people thinking or doing. What did you notice about the situation? Then use this awareness to write a short story or scene based on that memory, incorporating the details you recall and personal insight you recorded.

Memoir Writing on Steroids

 It’s the memoir writing process on steroids! I thought. These scholars are creating a memoir of civilization in the Andes. …

For over a dozen years I've dreamed of visiting Machu Picchu, and I would have been quite content to go directly there and come straight home. That dream has come true on a much larger scale, and the ton of bonus insights I derived in the process have caused my understanding of Story to explode like a super nova.

Some people spend weeks or months boning up on a location before going there. Not me. I hit a place cold, get an overview from guides and local resources, then fill in the blanks later. In this case, I was ahead of the game. I'd watched a few documentaries and done a little reading about the Incas, but I was totally unprepared for the fire hose gush of compelling pre-Inca history that our guides saturated us with for over two weeks.

Over the last decade or so, teams of archeologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, linguists and others have made remarkable progress in piecing together fragments of information from multiple sources to give an expanded picture of life in various times and regions. For example, they have now discovered that although the Incas and others did not use writing as we know it, they did have a system of recording detailed historical information. They embedded stories in weaving and painted them on pottery. They recorded words and stories in knotted strings along with complex accounting records.

Before this trip, I had no idea that the Incas were merely the capstone on a vast pyramid of previous Andes civilizations and empires. Through a combination of enticement and coercion, the Incas united the Quechua, Aymara, Moche and assorted other people in the Andean region into a single, loosely knit empire. They were astute enough to take the best each culture had to offer, assimilating and building upon the accumulated skills and wisdom of those people.

As I listened to accounts of how old assumptions are being reinterpreted to incorporate new knowledge, I got goosebumps. I realized that in a very real sense, historians are now creating what amounts to a mega-memoir of Andean civilization. What they are doing is remarkably similar to what we as individuals go through in compiling memoirs. We also sort and compile memory fragments into cohesive stories of times, events and experiences. 

One thing that especially struck me as I pondered this epiphany was the fact that these experts didn’t just keep digging for more artifacts. They have continually pondered the significance of what they already had and developed new tools for analyzing it. They have not shied away from the occasional need to challenge assumptions and edit the big picture as the need arose. 

A major key to recent progress has been the growing levels of collaboration among researchers in a wide variety of disciplines. Each brings a unique perspective has resulted in much deeper, multidimensional understanding.

There’s a major lesson for memoir writers in the Andean discoveries: we can also benefit from reassessing what we already know, perhaps with the help of a team of others to provide new perspectives. We can also use tools like old photos (not just family ones – check the web for photos of places and things from various decades in your past), old phone books and other historical documents, music, and conversations with relatives and past acquaintances. 

Perhaps the most important cue these researchers give us as we explore explore new perspectives is to question assumptions and perceptions. Look for the roots of current attitudes and beliefs and follow them to new conclusions. Follow the researchers’ example and put your memoir writing on steroids. 

Write now: spend time on research to deepen your memories of the past and write about them. You don’t have to write an entire memoir. Vignettes and essays are enough to answer questions in years to come. Leave a comment about resources you find especially helpful.

The Tree of Me

On a whim inspired by matroyshka dolls and Growing Old: A Journey of Self-Discovery by Danielle Quinodoz, I decided to make a sketch of my “layers.” I found a tabloid-sized sheet of blank newsprint, picked up a pencil, and within about five minutes this graphic emerged showing my life from beginning to now. For the purposes of sharing and further embellishing, I redrew it with color for the boundaries. It’s still rough, as you can see by the orange blotch in the core that didn’t work out quite as hoped. But that’s okay. This is a source of inspiration and insight, not destined for the living room wall.

I was surprised as could be to see it. I’ve thought for ages about a chronological map of stages of my life. I like this one ever so much better. It’s organic and representative. As Quinodoz points out, I hold all those previous layers within me, but redefine them and cover them with new growth as I go.

When I began, I had no sense of direction. I thought I might be making a graph of roles I play. This emerged on its own. I will still work with the role idea later, as creativity further instructs.

I especially value this form, because within the layers I have space to write thoughts about that era. Here I’ve included rudimentary memories of threads of activity and my emotions and state of mind at the time. The layer boundaries are especially bold and jagged for times of great turmoil and upheaval. My world shifted on its axis at these points. The colors aren’t significant. Note that the boundaries are uneven – like the rings in an actual tree. They serve to organize memory clusters to clarify my sense of them and provide inspiration when I write.

Perhaps I’ll develop this further, but for now it’s a super-rich source of writing prompts, and it basically comprises a life-long memoir-at-a-glance, at least for me. Those cryptic notes won’t mean a lot to anyone else. 

It does show chronology, because the rings expand year-by-year. I didn’t put dates on the ring boundaries, but I could. I could do a lot of things. So can you, if you give this a try. I suggest using even larger paper so you have more room to take your time and make more notes.  I predict that you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the patterns and insights.

Write now: Find a huge sheet of paper or piece of posterboard and make your own cross-section. You  might sketch it roughly in pencil first, then move to the full-size sheet. Add detail and make it rich. Then write about each layer.

How to Write the Killer Query

Does the thought of finding an agent or publisher give you vapors? If so, you are in good company. Query letters are among the most important documents an author writes. Whether you are a full-time freelancer or a wannabe one-time writer hoping for publication of a memoir, your future hangs on that one page. It can make or break your chances of seeing your words between commercially printed covers.

Writing great query letters is a special art form, and not one that we learn in any classes in school. Some people complete their MFA in writing without learning this crucial skill. So what’s a person to do?

The traditional way to learn is to find a good book. You may find something in your library, but this is an important topic, and it’s worth having something on hand to refer to whenever you need it.

I must include a disclaimer here. Since I had any clue at all about how to write, I’ve only written one query letter and received an acceptance within half an hour of sending the email. That was to a local newspaper and I included the story cold, so it wasn’t a true query letter. Both my traditionally published books were pitched in a face-to-face meeting, without so much as a proposal. Remember the old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”? That does help. Because I’m always as busy as I want to be without tracking down additional writing assignments, I don’t write query letters, so I can only offer suggestions.

What I suggest, besides scanning the titles on Amazon, is to surf over to  visit Query Shark. That site has an amazing collection of query letters that have been critiqued by Janet Reid, an agent with the FinePrint Literary Management Agency.

Janet suggests that you read all the posts and learn from them. Now that there are more than 200, perhaps the most recent hundred will do. Then, if you wish, you may submit your query letter in hopes of having it anonymously critiqued. There are explicit instructions on how to accomplish this and increase the (slim) odds yours will be chosen. She focuses on fiction, but her Q&A page says she occasionally runs examples from other genres (like memoir).

A couple of paragraphs way down one page on the AgentQuery site advises you that memoirs are marketed like fiction, so Janet’s models should give you terrific guidance.

Miss Snark, the literary agent seconds AgentQuery’s advice that the memoir must be finished and polished before querying. She adds further that “You get one shot on this. Don't **** it up by querying before your ms is ready.” Check out other topics on her site. She retired after two years, but her helpful posts remain, and her blog writing format differs from QueryShark’s.

On her PubAgent blog, Agent Kristin advises that “Writing a memoir is not therapy.” Focus on the artistic merits of your work, not the fact that writing it changed your life. Art sells, therapy doesn’t.

Lynn Griffin has uplifting news in her “Easy-Peasy Query Letter” post on The Writers’ Group blog. “Writing a query letter for fiction or memoir should take no more than 15-20 minutes tops. Assuming, of course, you've been researching agents while writing your book.”

Research. Aw, yes. All agents want to read queries they way they ask for them to be written.  Read and study their sites. Know what they handle, how they want to be approached, and anything else they tell you. Then write away. Your odds will be much higher if you study this subject before you start collecting those infamous rejection slips. Perhaps you’ll win the submissions lottery on your first submission.

Write now: read a couple of AgentQuery’s columns, then practice writing a query letter for your story or memoir. Who knows? You might find someone to send it to, now or later.

 

Preach, Teach, or Testify?

A friend forwarded me a link to a post on K.M. Wieland’s most awesome blog, WORDplay. The post, titled Should Stories Be Soapboxes, addresses the possible pitfalls of writing stories for the purpose of converting others to your line of thinking, whether that be religious, political, or philosphical. K.M.’s work is primarily addressed to writers of fiction, but it applies equally well to life story and memoir writing, and I urge you to enjoy the richness of her offerings.

Lots of people may read this post and wonder, “Am I guilty of this?” or “How do I avoid this?” and “How does this apply to memoir?”

I'll use a personal example of a situation that could go either way. I’m currently writing a memoir of my girlhood (covered in a separate blog). The story follows the path my husband and I took as we toured Los Alamos on our last visit in August, 2000. One of the first landmarks I saw was the Christian Church. My family was involved with that church from its inception, and I have filled five manuscript pages with memories of my experiences there. One of them was my baptism.

This would be a place to preach, if I were so inclined, which I’m not. I simply reported the event, along with my subsequent immature reaction:

... The week after I got home, I answered the call and was baptized later that afternoon at the Baptist Church, which generously shared their facility for such occasions. Answering that foundational question, “Do you, Sharon, take Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior?” was a little daunting. Well, yes. I did. And as I went under the water, I just hoped I wouldn’t regret this down the line somewhere when I’d have to make a tough decision. For at least the next couple of days I took this commitment with the utmost seriousness, feeling ever so holy and righteous. ...

Had I been inclined to preach, I might have lapsed into a testimony along the lines of how much God loves the world and gave His son to save us from sin, my joy at knowing that now I was now on my way to Heaven ... and urge readers to make their own decisions for Christ. ...

But therein lies a paradox. I’m not a “testifying type.” That’s not my calling. But some people are. We have all met a few. If you are one of them and you don’t include that testimony in your writing, you won’t reflect the truth of who you are. Readers will respond to your writing the same way they respond to your testimony in daily life.

Bottom line: Follow K.M. Weiland’s advice to be passionate about your message and let it lead the story. Testify if that’s where your fire is, and look for a way to let as much of that testimony as possible be showing rather than telling.

Write now: draft a story about a topic you feel strongly about. Select a topic that you hope will influence the opinions of readers. Look for ways of letting your actions, interactions and reactions show your passion rather than blurting it out directly.

New Toy for Life Writers

My writing time yesterday and today went into writing web code rather than words, and I just finished building a new toy. Technically I guess it’s called a widget. My very first widget. I’m so excited!

The tips change daily, so be sure to come back often to find a new one, and if you have a blog connected with life writing of one sort or another, please be my guest. This is a toy that’s made to be shared. Just follow the link at the bottom, copy the code, and paste it into your sidebar.

Hopefully I’ll soon learn what it would take to add it as a gadget to Vista desktops. How cool would that be, to have a Life Writing Tip of the Day right there in your sidebar?

This idea sprang to mind a few months ago. I have lots of ideas like that, and it’s rare that I actually bring one to fruition like this, so this is extra cause for celebration. Actually, it’s not unlike all the story ideas floating around that I think about writing, but there’s only so much time.

Remember that Flavia card I found a couple of posts ago? This widget is like those words. And now that I’ve got my mind cleared out, I’m ready to write stories again and start putting those tips into practice.

Write now: about ideas you’ve had that you did or did not implement. What stories have you thought of and not written? Are they on your Story Idea List?

Chinese Clothes Dryers

Most apartment buildings in China have balconies, and a large percentage of the balconies we saw were decorated with drying laundry. I was fascinated at the diversity and universality of these displays, and followed the urge to snap many photos, a few of which are included in the slideshow above.

As I stared at building after building decorated with drying dainties, I wondered how long it will be before America adopts something similar. How long will it be before snooty neighborhoods that don’t allow yards to be marred with such plebian amenities as clotheslines change their thinking? How long will it be before clothespin sales hit record levels, as bicycles sales are already doing?

I was reminded of our visit to Ireland a couple of years ago. All the B&Bs we stayed in featured clotheslines in the yard, and most were in use. One hostess explained Ireland’s rate system for electricity. Initial costs remain low, to enable families to heat their homes, cook their food, and light a few bulbs without undue strain on their budgets. Above that minimum, rates go up a graduated scale, similar to our income tax structure. The incentive to “dry green” is strong!

Back in the fifties, I grew up with clotheslines, and spent my share of time attaching clothes to them and removing them again. I remember hanging lingerie on center lines between larger items so they wouldn’t be visible to the neighbors. My first experience with automatic dryers was in a college dorm, and later in the laundromat during our Boston apartment days. I loved the convenience of dryers, but I never considered that I’d have one of my own. I agonized for months over what the neighbors would think of my dingy sheets when I hung them on the line in our new home when Hubby finished grad school. I studied television commercials to learn of new products for getting them sparkling white.

Imagine my surprise when the new house we moved into in Richland, Washington did not have a clothesline. Instead, it had a laundry closet in the hall with space for both washer and dryer. Within less than a week, that space was occupied by a matched coppertone Kenmore washer and dryer set, perfect for the dozens of diapers I had to wash each week. My worries about dingy sheets were over, primarily because the new washer got them cleaner than the laundromat machine. But even if they’d stayed dingy, nobody would have seen.

Except for rare occasions on camping trips, I have not used a clothesline for ... never mind how long. But in this “thinking green” era, I’m becoming nostalgic. Those ubiquitous clothes hanging from balconies in China fed my desire for the fragrance of sun-dried sheets towels. My yearning rose even higher when I read Pat Flathouse’s Thankful Thursday blog where she mentioned that hanging sheets to dry is one of her favorite things to do. I’m cogitating the best place in our steeply sloping, seriously shady yard to install this post-modern appliance.

Write now: about your experience with laundry and clotheslines. Did you ever hang clothes out to dry on a cold winter day? Did you dash out to gather them from the line just as it began to rain? Did you hang them on the porch or in the basement when it was raining? When did you first use a dryer? If you have always been fortunate enough to avoid laundry duty at home, what about college or camping trips?

Your Best Insurance Policy

Have you ever heard the term “Blogicide”? Doesn’t the very idea raise the hair on the back of your neck? I found it on Don Lafferty’s blog. The idea of having my whole blog go poof! is seriously chilling. Don confesses to killing his own blog by experimenting with Wordpress, but there are other ways a blog could vanish from cyberspace, like massive server meltdown or sabotage.

If Don’s story had to happen, I wish I’d known about it a month ago today when I was sitting on a panel about blogging at Story Circle Network’s Stories From the Heart conference in Austin. Using blogs as online journals and places to save your writing with related issue of privacy, public blogs versus closed ones, and similar matters were under discussion when a light went on in my head.

“Always keep your blog backed up. Over the long run, you can’t assume online storage in a single location is any safer than storing things on your own hard drive,” I cautioned them. I was thinking of online server disasters. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we can be our own worst enemy. Don’s story would have been the perfect illustration.

Whether you are blogging or writing stories (or anything else), saving your work in more than one place is good insurance. I need the fingers on both hands to count the growing number of friends who have lost major chunks of work to a hard drive crash or fatal virus. It’s like losing part of your soul!

This is post number 228 for me. These posts collectively represent a huge amount of work and are irreplaceable. I’m not taking chances: I copy the finished post from my browser, pictures, links, and all, and paste it into the bottom of an ongoing OpenOffice document. (I stash the source pictures in a separate folder before uploading them.) I start a new document each month, adding new posts as each appears. If I’m in a huge hurry and get lazy, I can add it later, but I don’t let too many pile up.

I keep those files on an external hard drive with my other documents. Every week or two I back that folder up onto an internal hard drive. I keep promising myself I’ll learn how to do automatic backups to keep things current on a daily basis, but ... you know what they say about good intentions.

The external hard drive is my choice now for all the files I use on a regular basis. Not long ago I had major computer problems and faced the likelihood that Hotshot would have to spend time in the hospital. By moving my working files to a removable drive, I could keep working even if that happened.

I feel safe from blogicide and other forms of digital disasters. How about you?

Write now: about your experience with lost work. This may be due to a computer fluke or crash, or it may be a craft project that was destroyed, photos that were lost, or any other type of work. If you’ve never lost anything, write about the safeguards you employ to keep things safe. Or, write a plan of action for safeguarding your work in the future.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka, Ritergal

Introducing Gretchen, My Inner Censor and Critic

It’s been nearly two years since my Muse, Sarabelle, introduced herself to me. Those of you who have read my occasional reports of Sarabelle’s influence know that she tends to be a bit feisty at times.

This morning as I sat musing about some seldom visited memories from long ago, Sarabelle tapped me on the shoulder and delivered some surprising news: She is only one of the entities on my Inner Writing Team. In short order she introduced me to Gretchen, my Inner Censor/Critic, and Betty, my Inner Editor. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, Sarabelle vanished, leaving me to my own devices to get acquainted with her colleagues.

With a bit of trepidation sparked by her forbidding appearance, I choose to begin with Gretchen. I’m immediately transported to the hallway of a prison, in front of iron bars across gray cells. The cells are surprisingly bright, lit by a small barred window, high on the wall. Despite the light, there is no color in this scene.

Gretchen stands before me, a study in black and white herself. Her austere black leather outfit and knee-high boots match her stick-straight, raven tresses, in sharp contrast to her pale complexion. Her eccentric outfit bares her right shoulder for ease of motion as she keeps unwanted memories and stories at bay. Measuring no more than five feet in height, and wiry in build, she’s surprisingly small for someone who appears so menacing. She stands facing me, silent and staring, with arms tightly crossed, black whip clenched in one hand, and a huge ring of keys on her other wrist. She is not the sort of person I generally care to deal with, but I must get acquainted. The significance of her sudden appearance is immediately apparent.

“Gretchen, I’m pleased that we are finally meeting. I appreciate all the fine work you’ve done over the years guarding my darker memories. Now I need your assistance in visiting them.”

“That is forbidden!” she barks in reply. “They are locked in here for good reason. They will make you unhappy and hurt you. They can hurt other people. It’s for your own good that I do this!” Her earnest fierceness is almost comical in its intensity.

“I understand. I have no intention of opening the gates and letting these monsters run amok, but I need to talk with them to gain some important insights. I’ve been getting appeal requests from several and need to evaluate their cases.”

She responds with a long string of admonitions warning me of dire consequences, questioning my motives, my judgment, even my writing skills, and generally tries to scare me off. My resolve begins to weaken, but then I recall why I’m here. Those memories are part of me, and I’m determined to know them better, liberating the ones that can be absolved. Many have served their sentences and are due for release. Others may have gotten a bum rap to begin with. I realize that reason will not work. I’ll have to pull rank to get past her.

“Thank you Gretchen. No one can fault you for lack of dedication. Here is a list of four memories I wish to visit today. Please bring them to me in my study. I’ll expect them to arrive in five minutes. That will be all.” With that, I return to my study, settling into a comfortable chair with a cup of fresh coffee and a pad of paper, ready to proceed with the interviews.

Right now I have my work cut out for me dealing with those old memories. I’ll find Betty some other time.
Write now: about your muse, Inner Censor, or Inner Editor. Do these entities have names? What do they look like? How do they act? What do they say when you talk to them? If you’ve never had a conversation with any of then, do some writing practice in dialog form and see what emerges. You are bound to be as surprised as I was at what emerges.

A Place for Your Stories

This post is a thank you note to Ronni Bennet, creator of The Elder Storytelling Place, a blog I wish I’d started. Ronni created this site as a place where anyone with at least a half-century of life experience can post (short) lifestories, and the world can read some very fine ones.

A person could spend lots and lots of time on this blog. Right now it’s only in its fourth month, with a total of 78 stories, so you could conceivably read them all in a long afternoon. (That is rapidly changing.) But the stories on this site are only the tip of the iceberg. Ronni includes links to three other “Elders’ Storytelling Websites” and many contributors have websites with stories. This may be a story web with no boundaries.

I’m so glad Ronni has started this site, and I hope that submissions snowball. It’s a treat to read other people’s stories. No two are the same. Some are funny, some heart-rending, some informative and some thought-provoking. Each is written from somebody’s heart.

I hope everyone will go read stories on The Elder Storytelling Place. Your muse is sure to get excited by the field trip as memories dance around, and your story idea list will grow. I hope a lot of you will contribute stories to the site. If you’ve never seen your words on the web, you don’t know what you are missing. It’s lots of fun to check back and read the encouraging comments. You can send the link to everyone you know, and be sure to send it to me while you are at it. Go to Ronni’s site, look in the top left corner under “This Is Your Blog” and click on “What You Can Do Here” and “How to Do It” to find out how to get started.

I’m going to look through my files to find something that’s about a page long and send one off myself.

Thanks again, Ronni. I’m putting you in my links bar.

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal