The Memoir Writing Club

Join the international movement of memoir writers now!

The Memoir Writing Club will provide you with ongoing support as you write your memoir – using The Memoir Writing Workbook as your guide.

Up-to-date news on memoir writing will be available from Irene on this website on an going basis. Do visit us regularly.

Start a Memoir Writing Club in your local area now. Here’s how:

Read the chapter “How to Form and Guide a Memoir Writing Club” – in The Memoir Writing Workbook.
Make a list of people you would like to write with, use the following suggestions:

– friends
– family
– local writing groups
– co-workers
– local social groups

Talk to your local library/social group etc about a club in your area.
Put a flyer up seeking members to join your club.

The Memoir Writing Club

When you form a Memoir Writing Club, let us know! We will add your club to our website, and keep in touch with you. Register your Memoir Writing Club here.

Memoir Writing - Getting Started – Hints & Tips from Irene Graham

So you want to write your Memoir – but you don’t know where to start?

The Road to Memoir

Writing memoir serves many purposes – it is not solely for the purpose of being published. Memoir writing can be practiced at any age – we have stories from the time that we can talk. You do not have to be several decades old to write memoir.

Now an accepted genre in its own right, memoir writing not only provides the story of our lives to share with family and friends, but can be used as a rich and vibrant source of bedrock material to translate into fiction. Memoir writing can also be used as a healing process to revisit the trauma and challenges that effect all our lives – and is now recognized as a therapeutic process in the US. Writing memoir is a very effective medium to access our inner worlds by using life experiences and imagination to strengthen inherent creativity and imagination.

How to Begin

Commit to writing your life story – for yourself. Do not edit your life experiences before you pick up the pen – which will only lead to dishonest writing and frustration in your work. You do not have to show your writing to anyone. You can decide what you want to do with your writing when you have written your life story, you do not have to make that decision before you start.

Decide on a personal writing programme that suits your schedule. It should include a commitment as to the number of hours per week that you can commit to writing - where and when it suits you. Choose a time of the day or week to write – morning, afternoon, evening, weekend – whatever works best for you. Make a date with yourself to write – and stick to it. If you made a business appointment or an arrangement to meet someone, you wouldn’t let them down, so don’t let yourself down either. Stick to your personal appointment, and meet it consistently. There is something about doing the same thing at the same time every day or every week that our systems and brains seem to enjoy. Routine, especially a routine that gives us pleasure, is good for the soul. Try it and see if it works for you. You will feel great and that time will become so important to you that you will find yourself saying, “I can’t do this or that then, that is my time to write.” If your environment is important to you, choose a special spot to write in. Make that spot yours, make it unique, so that you immediately feel comfortable when you sit down to write.

You may also decide to attend a memoir workshop, buy a book on memoir writing, and/or join a writing group that will provide support and feedback for your

work. The Memoir Writing Workbook is included in the Introductory Memoir Writing Online Writing Workshop - refer to Irene’s writing website: www.TheCreativeWritersWorkshop.com for full details.

Also, reading memoirs is also very important, you will learn a lot with regard to structure and how the author focused their life story. Listen to your intuition, decide what course of action suits your particular circumstances, and try it. If it doesn’t work, try another course of action, each time you will learn something and gain a deeper insight into your writing needs.

Understanding Memoir

It is important to understand the differences between Autobiographical Writing and Memoir Writing. Autobiographical writing encompasses a whole life – a life story usually written chronologically from birth to a given point in time. Thus autobiographical writing includes perhaps hundreds of characters, places and events from the writer’s entire life.

Memoir writing is about drawing upon life stories and memories and focusing them into a memoir – usually upon a particular subject and the impact it had on the writer’s life. For example:

living on a particular street in inner city Dublin or New York in the 1960’s and the events and impact that era had upon your life
a story of adoption and the search for birth parents
the adventures of a woman traveling alone around the world
growing up with hippie parents living life on the road
the influence of one person upon an entire family – from your perspective

In general, you can have many memoirs – but you only have one autobiography – (unless you are a statesperson or famous and life circumstances command several autobiographies!).

By focusing upon a particular subject matter that was important to you in your life allows the reader to gain an understanding as to the challenges and decisions that shaped the person you became. It also allows you to include important details as you creatively engage with your life story and decide what the focus of your memoir will be. Memoirs are not usually written chronologically which allows the writer to engage in story structure and write creative non-fiction.

Planning Your Writing Journey

Memoir writing entails backwork, that is, recalling and evoking life experiences so that a pattern from your life can emerge which subsequently offers you an insight into the focus and theme of your memoir. Perhaps you already know the focus of your life story, if so, then developing this story will be your starting point.

Whichever point you are at in your writing journey it is important to consider the events, people and environment of your life, or particular life story. The more

willing you are to engage and be honest with these aspects of your life and story, the more material you will uncover to develop and subsequently structure your memoir. It takes time, so it is important to start with a personal writing plan so that you can engage effectively in the development of your story. Be realistic, make achievable goals.
You may also need to engage in research. Perhaps you need to interview living relatives or friends that can recall important aspects of a person you maybe did not know or vaguely remember – but because of circumstances had an effect upon your life. Use a tape recorder to record their memories of this person. Make a list prior to meeting them of the questions you want answers to. Read newspapers and magazines applicable to the era you are writing about. This will allow you to become more familiar with that time and may help to provide details from that era that you may have forgotten about. You may also need to visit or revisit places that are important to your story. Make it into an adventure, go on holiday to this place, take a road trip with a friend, decide before you go what you want answers to and how you think you will go about achieving them.
Research brings about all sorts of avenues you were not expecting to encounter. Make sure you do not get stuck in research, it is important to stay focused and concentrate on the aspects that are important to your particular story.

Right-Brain/Left-Brain Thinking and Cognitive Learning Skills

Both my memoir and fiction writing workshops are based upon right-brain/left-brain thinking and cognitive learning skills. While it is not possible in this space to

delve deep into this mode of learning, I have included below brief details that will help you to understand a little more of this method, as well as a Sensory Thinking exercise that you can utilize on an ongoing basis to generate writing material.

Firstly, It is important to realise that it is not an advantage to be either right-brained or left-brained. We have two parts to our brain – the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere – and we need to utilise both of them for optimum productivity and performance, consciously working with our strengths and developing our weaknesses.

Writing certainly requires the discipline of being able to flip from one side of the brain to the other. The left side of the brain asks the questions: What do I remember about Aunt Sarah when she took me on holiday in 1963? Why did Aunt Sarah suddenly leave Uncle Raymond? How will I structure my story? It is the right side of the brain that answers these questions creatively.

The more familiar you become with and use right-brain/left-brain exercises and techniques to develop your writing the more creative your writings will be. Visual writing techniques employed in right-brain/left-brain writing skills are a powerful way to enhance memoir recall and (imagination in fiction writing), which also enhances the unique writing voice. These varying techniques also show the writer ways to develop and structure creative stories, in both creative non-fiction and fiction writing.

For example: Try the following Olfactory - Sensory Thinking Exercise:

Note 1: This exercise can be done by yourself, or ask someone to do it with you. If you are doing the exercise with another person, take it in turns to select the item for each other. Put the item in a bag to conceal it from the other person.

Note 2: The object of the exercise is not to name the item, but to engage with the scent and see what it evokes within you: perhaps a memory, a thought, a word, a person, a place, a colour – whatever comes to mind. Do not edit your thoughts.

Right-Brain Tip!

Remember: the left side of your brain will want to label the scent, to give it a name. The right side of your brain will engage in the ‘feeling’ element of the scent and what it evokes within you. Stay with your feelings; forget about what it is that you are sniffing.

Search for an item with a really strong fragrance. It might be vinegar, mint sauce, tiger balm, perfume or coffee – anything that has a strong scent.
Close your eyes.
Smell the item.
Immediately jot down your thoughts, using only words – don’t write sentences at this stage. Write as many words, however random, that come to mind.
4. When you have finished, write a paragraph on any aspect of your thoughts eg:

one of the words
some of the words
something completely different

When complete, read your work, or read it aloud to the other person.

Tapping into your Well of Memory - a few tips

1. Family photographs are a great way to evoke memories. Be selective. Choose photographs that have a meaning. Categorize the photographs by years or people. To begin with, study each photograph. Write short descriptive paragraphs about the memories these photographs evoke, later you can use these details when you are writing your memoir and are engaged in the creative process of writing.

2. Think of events that affected your life. Write further paragraphs about these events, see what characters (people) pop into your mind as you think about the event. Write paragraphs with regard to the event and include details of the characters that were present in your life during this time.

Truth and Memoir Writing

Truth – not silence, is golden.

Truth lies in the by-roads that we don’t always want to travel. Yet when we do, we seem to cross a threshold and invite into our lives a new perspective on our past and gain a freedom previously unknown.

I feel it is a huge challenge in our lives to be honest, really really honest – and particularly with ourselves. Sometimes we don’t even realise we are being dishonest; feelings can get buried and we can live life in denial and refuse to accept the truth. Sometimes withholding the truth can change the course of a life, or lives. Sometimes we cannot cope with the changes honesty will inevitably bring and sometimes it is not the time for the truth to be known.

Yet I believe that truth will always surface – it may take decades or generations for the truth to be known, but inevitably, the truth in any situation will ultimately emerge.

Memoir writing is about telling the truth, from your perspective. In writing about an event that was significant to you, you will be writing about the effect it had upon you personally. That is your internal truth – your emotional truth about the situation. Another person recounting the same event will have a different slant on it, which will be their internal and emotional truth. Perhaps there is never one real truth in any situation.

Yet it is important to remember that there is a difference between truth and changing the hair colour of the woman who lived next door, or names that you do not want to be made known.

It is the internal truth of your memoir that remains unaltered in your writing. The external truth can be altered (the hair colour or name of the woman next door) but not to the point where it changes the factual truth.

It is the experience that you are relating in your story which you must stay true to as much as possible. You do not make up experiences in memoir writing. You do not pretend things happened – if you pretend, you are writing fiction.

Writing Voice

Memoirs are always written in the first person. Unlike fiction writing where the writer has a choice of 1st Person, 3rd Person Narrative or 3rd Person Omniscient – memoir writing is always written in the first person. You are in the story, the events happened to you, and you are recalling them from your perspective.

As part of developing your writing voice, you are seeking to find the tone of how you say things. It is really important to remember from the first time you pick up your pen that no one wants to read what has become known as the ‘misery memoir’, the “Oh, poor me, look what happened to me in my life” book. It’s boring; it makes you into a victim. It seeks revenge on those you feel have wronged you. It makes for miserable reading.

The tone of your writing should not be self-pitying, vengeful or whiney. Do you ever feel like listening to someone when they are moaning? No! And you won’t want to read their book either!

Another important ingredient in writing memoir is your ability to reflect upon your life and communicate this reflective observation to your reader – by using your Retrospective Voice. The retrospective voice is like the second voice in your memoir – the mature voice of objectivity and wisdom that is spoken through the mood and tone of your writing as you convey your story.

The attitude of your retrospective voice, which is expressed through the tone and

mood of your reflections, relates to how objective you are about the event that you are writing about. Think about how you feel. Can you find an amusing, good-humoured or light-hearted voice to relate to the event, or even an ironic voice? You may also find your retrospective voice in being just deeply thoughtful, which will show the reader that you have a mature, contemplative attitude toward your life.

As you engage with your writing your writing voice will develop, and the more you write the more you will strengthen and deepen your writing voice. From my workshop experiences I feel it is when a writer knows what it is that he/she wants to write about – it is then they truly find their writing voice and connect deeper with the creative process.

Going Forward

Think about your life experiences. What happened to you when? Where were you and who was in your life at that point in time? What effect did those experiences have upon your life? By answering these questions repeatedly you will be able to see a pattern emerge and subsequently find a subject matter based upon your life experiences that could be the focus of your memoir.

Most of all keep writing, focus upon your life experiences and keep writing about them. Read memoirs and note how the author focused upon their life experiences and structured their stories. Do not be afraid to experiment. Find the path in your writing journey that suits you…and may you be inspired to travel further into the magic land of words.