Category: Memoir

The Struggle for Self: Writing Memoir

1/31/2016

Henri Bensussen is currently weeding her garden and watching a gopher drill its way to a flower bed of its choice, and also sending out poetry manuscripts to contests, checking off rejections, etc. Last year her chapbook Earning Colors was published by Finishing Line Press; she hopes this year will bring some good news too.

A report on the importance of memoir
by Henri Bensussen

Last month’s Mendocino Coast Writers Conference newsletter announced the 2016 conference presenters and their workshops:
Laura Atkins (Writing for Young People), Reyna Grande (Creative Nonfiction), James W. Hall (Novel and Mystery), Lori Ostlund (Short Fiction), Jessica Piazza (Poetry), Les Standiford (Master Class in Narrative Structure), Jordan Rosenfeld (Emerging Writers), and Brooke Warner (Editor/Publisher).

One of the perks of being a member of the conference board is the opportunity to sit in on one of the workshops. Finally having resolved to begin work on a memoir of my odd family, I’ll be tempted to try Reyna Grande’s Creative Nonfiction, though Les Standiford’s Narrative Structure would be valuable, or, if I fashioned my story as mystery (how did I end up in this family??), I could try James W. Hall. So many choices.

Mary Karr

A few weeks ago at a retreat, trying to get myself grounded in my story, I read Mary Karr’s latest, The Art of Memoir. She likes memoir's “democratic aspect” (anyone can write one, if they feel passionately about their story). She describes memoir as “episodic” (novels have plots, but history has a series of scenes). “Readers want reality,” she says, “a coming of age, a survival and overcoming. . . . If you are a worrier, apologizer, or thinker, then memoir is for you.” That pretty much describes me, I thought, feeling more optimistic. Maybe I could really do this.

Her book goes deep into memoir’s various elements. One thing that stood out for me is her focus on the importance of the opening paragraph. “The split or inner conflict (some aspect of the writer’s struggle for self, a blazing psychic struggle, the reason driving you to tell this tale) must manifest on the first page and form the book’s thrust or through line—how the self evolves over time and reconciles this inner conflict: a journey toward the self’s overhaul by book’s end.”

Since the retreat was a silent one in a former convent, I couldn’t share the book’s ideas with anyone, so I spent a lot of time writing them out. My notebook filled with quotes from Karr’s book that I didn’t want to forget. Which brings to mind the reason memoir is so important—that we write these stories not only of our pasts but of the times and cultures we lived in, a necessary history that enlarges the arc of the human story.

“The poets seem to be only more frank and plain-spoken than others. Their verse is but confessions. They always confide in their readers, and speak privily with them, keeping nothing back.” —Henry David Thoreau

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Writing the Hard Stuff

10/14/2015

1 Comment

Guest Post by Norma Watkins
MCWC Board Member and 2011 Presenter

Norma Watkins is the author of the award-winning memoir The Last Resort. She has a Ph.D. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, which she teaches at Mendocino College’s Coast Campus.

I teach creative writing at a small community college. My memoir students often dread writing the truth for fear of offending family and friends. How do we approach the material no one likes to admit: the secrets, lies, and misunderstandings that flow like an underground stream through our lives?
Mary Karr (The Liar’s Club, The Art of Memoir) says she shows her manuscripts to everyone concerned. If I had done that with my memoir, it would still be in the drawer.
There are several ways to handle the hard stuff: you can follow Mary Karr’s example and let everyone have a say; or try my way and ask no one’s approval (Prepare for negative feedback); or, you can turn it into fiction.
I’m enjoying that third alternative. I’m working on a novel now about the three women who died for love of my father. I don’t know enough to make it a memoir, but I know plenty enough to offend. So, it’s a novel. Everyone has different names, and the stuff I don’t know, I guess at, invent, imagine.

Here are a few other suggestions to help you get through the hard stuff:
Ask yourself two questions: Is the story true, and is the story meant to hurt? If your answers are yes and no, cast doubt aside and move on.
There may be conflicting claims on the truth, but this is your truth, the story as you remember and experienced it.
As the narrator, you are a step removed. The thing happened to you, but not to the you who’s doing the writing. As narrator, you stand back: observing, remembering, setting down, revising, cutting away as if life were a piece of marble. With each revision, with each recounting, you remove yourself—the you who cringed, was ashamed and regretted. You gain distance.
We write memoir to answer questions, to find out what really happened and why (In my memoir, The Last Resort). I wanted to know why I felt so afraid during the civil rights troubles, and so trapped in my marriage. We want to understand ourselves and other people in the story. As we answer the questions, we discover more and see more clearly.
Remember, in memoir, as in fiction, no heroes and no villains. Look for the reasons behind bad actions or bad intentions, See without filters people you may once have thought of as gods. Look deeper, understand, and forgive. Create real characters—people we want to read about.
Insert a little humor. Make it funny and you can tell us anything. Laugh at yourself and we laugh with you.
There’s another alternative. The southern writer Ellen Douglas, (which is not her real name—and there’s another solution—change your name) titled her last book: Four Truths I’m Finally Old Enough to Tell. You can wait until they die.

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The Struggle for Self: Writing Memoir

Writing the Hard Stuff﻿

​Guest Post by Norma WatkinsMCWC Board Member and 2011 Presenter

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Writing the Hard Stuff

Guest Post by Norma Watkins
MCWC Board Member and 2011 Presenter