Writing a memoir is like taking a good photo.
What is the best angle?
What snapshot do you want to show?
As I taught my students three years ago, a memoir is not like an autobiography. I could not write every detail if I tried.
The Bridesmaid Reject is my online platform for my memoir, currently called A Messed Up Kind of Beautiful. Although I’ve gone off topic in this blog, A Word or More will continue to be my place where I write about writing. I had so much I wanted to tell, but what to tell and what to leave out?
I have found playing with my memoir is much like playing with pictures. What story do you want tell? Lighter or darker? What is the message?
For example, if I’d taken pictures to my right, then the train track would’ve continued toward town. Do I want to show what looks like an abandoned area instead?
Perspective.
When I was a journalist and photographer, I cared a lot about accuracy. In my stories, I had to check my facts. The small town papers for which I worked used reporters as photographers, too. My skills with a camera were amateur at best, but lately I’ve been taken pictures again just because …
I want to write my memoir as accurately as possible. My husband has encouraged me as I continue on what’s proactive writing. I wrote about this last week in not bleeding on a page. Write with some reflection instead of reaction. I want the emotions in the moment to still appear.
In addition to taking pictures, mainly of nature scenes and my children, I’ve started typing my journals. I often pull my later material for my memoir from the journals. My pre-2007 journals are packed away somewhere.
While I’ve written many entries out of pure emotion, I’ve written just as many with a journalist’s fervor. I’ve written snapshots describing people, places, and food. I guess you could say it depended on my mood. I started doing something many avid private journalists might be familiar with.
I began typing my older journals beginning with my 2007 world map-themed book. I created a table of contents for the months. It will take a long … long … long time because of my parent, family, work, and memoir writing schedule. I type the original script in black, and I type my current comments in blue. These comments usually consist of edits I might make (not edits to the memory), but changes I’d make to sentence structure. I am also a smart ass on some of my twenty-one year old thoughts.
From January 4, 2007
I love him, but I will be free. Way to sound 21-years-old. This is like an 18-year-old without better sense of romance.
I always say that I will be the first to call out my own, delusional b.s. If I can’t make fun of myself, then my memoir won’t have any gravity.
As an aspiring writer, I felt uncomfortable writing about love. I never wanted to write a cliche relationship, a $5 CVS Christian romance paperback or bodice ripper. At age twenty, who was I to understand love? The Romeo and Juliet scenario was a cake left in the oven forty minutes past its time. In the Disney-world vision of my mind, I’d find this go big or go home kind of relationship.
The above comes from a chapter on which I’m currently working. It takes place between my first serious relationship and my second when I met with an editor, who later helped me with the first manuscript I took seriously. I was fortunate to have three short stories based on the novel published. The most lasting relationship out of all of it was the novel itself.
The journals. My old photographs. They help me recall the snapshots, and place them in order, like movie scenes. They have a certain order to tell the journey of mental health, autism, and ADHD.
My hope is to make it as real as possible without losing the writing charm.
By The Bridesmaid Reject
Corrie's Season 