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When I held a “Write What You Don’t Know” masterclass at Iowa Writers’ Workshop last October, one young man came up to me afterward and asked, “How do I know if I have a memoir in me?”
My answer: do you have a story of transformation?
You don’t have to have done anything amazing or newsworthy, or lived through earth-shattering events, to write a memoir. People read memoirs for the same reason they read novels—to feel with other humans as they deal with the challenges life throws at them. And better than a novel, for many readers, is the fact that this actually happened! It’s not a made-up story. This writer lived this story—and if they got through what life threw at them, maybe I can too.
Most of us don’t do anything newsworthy, or live through earth-shattering events. Memoirs show us how extraordinary the ordinary is—as well as how ordinary the extraordinary is. We pulse with the same emotions, fear the same fears and hope the same hopes, in backwoods and in palaces.
The story of a memoir is the story of a need: need to know, to belong, to find something, to overcome something. Maybe that need is answered in the course of the story; maybe not. Maybe it’s answered in a surprising, left-field sort of way; or perhaps it’s transcended in some greater fulfillment. Maybe the resolution lies in coming to terms with the realization that the need will never be answered. However dramatic the external events, a powerful memoir is at heart a story of personal transformation. That’s my theory, anyway.
It’s also my theory that all memoirs have a happy ending. Not a “they lived happily ever after” happy ending, but a sense of completion or questions answered, a sense of renewal, or just the collapse on the shore knowing you’ve survived a cataclysm. Because, if there wasn’t a happy ending, why would you want to tell your story? More likely you’d be in bed with a pillow over your head.
You may have lived this “happy ending” before you start to write, or it might still be in your future—but you sense it’s there. Will writing a memoir give you the insight that leads you out of the choppy waters to a place of calm? It will, if you’re prepared to question and explore. The journey toward insight or acceptance or inner peace can be the writing itself.
That’s why people will care what happened to you: because they’ll identify with your struggle, whatever it is—because all human beings face struggles. It’s heartening to read the story of someone triumphing over adversity, surviving ill fortune, building a life out of unpromising fragments. Sharing your journey gives them heart as they face their own.
When I was working on my memoir, Love Child, I moaned to a dear friend, “Why should anyone care what happened to me?” He replied—with kindness tinged by a hint of impatience at how dim I was being—”People care about characters in novels, and they’re not even real.”
Right?
Have you read Watership Down? Did you cry? I did. If people can care about rabbits, they can care about you
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"More likely you’d be in bed with a pillow over your head." !!
Enjoyed reading this - thank you.
Needed to hear this today. Especially this part, as I have been struggling to accept, I will probably never be free of chronic pain. My memoir will not have this happy ending. I am not yet positive about what the total transformation will look like. You ask: "Will writing a memoir give you the insight that leads you out of the choppy waters to a place of calm? It will, if you’re prepared to question and explore. The journey toward insight or acceptance or inner peace can be the writing itself." I have to believe it will. Thank you.