Tip #1 — Find An Occasion

Poet Stanley Plumly says that poems must weigh more at the end than they do at the beginning. As with poetry, the personal essay and memoir supply a vehicle for writers to find out what matters and to feel the weight of what matters. As writers, we take ourselves, and ultimately our readers, on a journey during which we learn from our experience as we relive it ourselves in reflection. At the end of our piece of writing, if it is fully manifest, we know more than when we started out, even if we believe we knew the whole story. We write to learn more and our writing leads us to this increased knowing.

• Although you as a writer may have been interested in your topic for a while, the speaker inside the essay must have an occasion upon which to start talking in the “now” of the essay.

• An example of how this works: Once in a university class, I assigned students the task of writing a description essay about a place for which they have strong feelings. One student came to see me in my office. He had chosen Dodger Stadium in his home city of Los Angeles as his topic because he loves baseball. He had associated many images with the topic, including the voice of Vin Scully, the game announcer he had listened to for years on TV when he watched games at home with his father. “But where do I start?” he said, “I have so many memories and thoughts about baseball.”As we talked, my student told me that he had recently gone to Dodger Stadium for the first time after years of listening to the games at home. At the ballpark, he searched for a glimpse of Vin Scully and could almost make out where he was sitting. He suddenly realized, though, that he wouldn’t be able to hear Scully like his father would be at home because Scully’s voice was being broadcast over radio and TV, not over the playing field. He experienced a moment of shock when he realized that this game, the first live one he had ever attended, would not be narrated for him by Scully’s familiar voice. As I listened to my student talk, I realized that one occasion the speaker in his essay could write from would be that of going to Dodger Stadium the first time and missing the voice of the adored and familiar sportscaster! I felt this because not being able to hear Scully made this game emotionally different from others for this young man. I asked him to describe the moment when he went to Dodger Stadium and looked for Scully and saw him.What did he think at that very moment? He said he wondered about his dad, listening at home, who had turned his son onto baseball, but had never gone to the stadium himself and now refused to go. And yet, unlike his father, the son wants to see the game live. So the occasion of the essay is going to Dodger Stadium for the first time and realizing he would not hear Scully’s familiar voice. That realization leads him to explore what it felt like going to Dodger Stadium without his father and what that meant to him. Emotionally, this sounds like an essay about having learned from one’s dad, going beyond what he has taught you and then not being able to share that new experience with him. The journey to this emotional information ultimately occurred in the written essay through descriptions of the event at Dodger Stadium, comparisons to watching games at home, memories of what the student’s dad taught him about baseball and times he played baseball to impress his father. His father’s refusal to attend a live game made the student aware of his father’s support and the need to grow beyond what his father could offer.

• Here is a second example of how reviewing the essay’s occasion helps writers embark on their emotional as well as physical journeys:A journalist and technical writer approached me to coach her. She wanted to describe her mother, an Italian immigrant who raised her daughter with gestures and words about the evil eye. She knew that her mother’s old country superstitions had made a great impact on her, and she wanted to write about them as a way of exploring who she is as a mother raising her own children. The topic encompasses so much. It’s that question again: Where to start? Well, what is the speaker’s occasion? What has prompted her to speech as the essay starts? Has she had an interaction with her son and responded in a way that reminds her of her mother? Is she facing a situation with her son that she doesn’t know how to handle but thinks her mother would have handled by invoking fear of the evil eye? If this is so,  she can start the essay with the situation and her hesitation in handling it and the knowledge about how her mother would have acted. Then she can write about what she was taught about the evil eye and what it takes to discourage the evil eye. She can write about the resulting effect on her thinking and feeling. Finally, she can return to the interaction with her son, ready to either do as her mother did or do something else she has figured out from thinking about her mother and her upbringing.

• If you know the topic you want to write about or the subject you want to explore and yet feel unable to make what is at the bottom of your heart and mind come into being on the page despite many details, images, anecdotes and much dialog, you might have some confusion about your occasion. Ask the writer inside your essay, the one on the page recounting your experience, this question: “Why are you writing this essay now?” “Because I missed hearing Vin Scully at Dodger Park and I missed having my dad there, too.” “Because I caught myself in the act of doing something my mother had done in raising me, and I wanted to explore how her actions affected me so I might choose a different way of behaving as a parent.”

Remember:

• You have created the speaker in the essay who represents you.
• The personal essay and poems require the writing’s speaker to reveal a reason for speaking now.
• Once you realize what the reason is, you will find a way to start and to end your essay or poem. You will also find the words that both tell your story and evoke your struggle toward understanding its meaning.
• Your success in winning the struggle is the very thing that makes your essay weigh more at the end than it did at the beginning.

Tip #2 — Recognize Roadblocks in Writing from Personal Experience

• Fear that what we have to say is not important enough or not correct.
• Fear that we are not up to the task of doing the experience justice in our writing.
• Fear that we will upset others.

Tip #3 — Work Around These Concerns

• I like to remember what the Nicolas Cage character, who was immortal and, therefore, without the five senses of us humans, said in the film City of Angels when he was courting the mortal character played by Meg Ryan. As she cut a pear, he asked, “What’s that like? What’s it taste like?” Describe it like Hemmingway.” She answered, “Well, it tastes like a pear. You don’t know what a pear tastes like?” His reply is good instruction for all writers, “I don’t know what a pear tastes like to you.” Our writing’s reason d’être is to describe what an event, person, dilemma, or memory tastes like to us; what we hear, touch, smell, see and taste helps us make our writing come alive.

• You have as much right to write from your experience as you have to dream. No one says you dreamt something incorrectly. What you experience is how you have experienced it and that is what an author is sharing when he or she writes from personal experience–whether that is in a poem, a personal essay, a memoir or in fiction. Of course, in nonfiction an author can’t tell untruths about someone in order to speak their truth but can tell how things seemed to them.

• When we lose confidence about our abilities, we must remember that wherever you start is a start and from there you continue and revise. Here are words from Los Angeles author, poet and writing teacher Jack Grapes, from “Just My Two Cents,” a letter to his students reprinted in Writing It Real, September 16, 2004:

BORING!?Confine your crisis to a ten-minute freak-out, and then get to the work you have to do. We all suffer from a crisis of confidence. So what? You will never be without it. It’s either going to be one of the many dragons, one of the many demons you take with you, or you will can sit at home with your demons and dragons and play with your toes.

Going through a crisis of ability?

BORING!

None of us are able. Except Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Goethe, Whitman.?The rest of us have to trudge up the mountain carrying our ineptness on our backs.?I’m a genius when it comes to playing with my toes.

So should I spend my time doing what I can do well? Is that the issue??Or is the issue doing what you love, doing what your soul drives you to do.?As Ezra Pound wrote in his “Cantos:”

What thou loves best remains
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee.

What thou lovest best remains
the rest is dross

Many of us would like to think we can avoid the deep inner work by writing “fiction,” by “making things up,” by focusing on “the writing,” as opposed to “voice,” by focusing on plot, as opposed to our own truth. But you can’t. It doesn’t matter whether what you write is called a memoir, non-fiction, fiction, etc., there is no difference between the truth and what you make up, because in the end it’s all true, and it’s all made up. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. What counts is that you discard all the crap of the brain and reach with your hands into the core of your heart and bring out what you know, what you’ve lived, what you’ve suffered and gloried through. The journal entry is bedrock, and if you can’t do it in the journal, you’re fooling yourself if you think you can do it in other forms. It’s all about the deep voice, and character: plot will take care of itself. And you’re going to have to come to terms with your truth, that that’s all you really have.?YOUR TRUTH.

It may be painful, it may be hard to write, but whatever glory you hope to get from writing will have to come from the struggles of the heart, or as William Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize speech, “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

• If you are worried about social and legal ramifications concerning your perceptions, you might benefit from reading Martha Engber’s contribution to Women Writing on Family edited by Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland. In her discussion of the issues concerning libel she mentions sticking to verifiable facts from credible sources when it comes to statements about living others. She also emphasizes being clear this story is from your point of view. And she includes two references of interest:  Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing by Thomas G. Couser and the website www.findlaw.com

• If you are not worried about legal ramifications but about upsetting those whose stories mingle with your own, write what you have to write. When you are finished, if you can, share this work with others telling them you have written from your own memories, which you know might not be infallible, and you hope they will tell you if anything strikes them as incorrect or difficult to have read by others. When they reply, you may be surprised at what they do NOT object to. And you may learn details you hadn’t known. Then it is your decision about whether to publish. Many of us as writers believe that it is important to tell our stories and that the audience for them is often people who have similar stories but do know our own families and friends.

Tip #4 — Find Fellow Travelers for  Support 

Having a group of trusted readers with whom you are interested in sharing your drafts means that you’ll keep writing and that you’ll get response as you write (to see where readers connect with your writing and where they are feeling left out or confused or distanced) that encourages you to put the story on the page, not the summary you may have been carrying around in your head. That story will contain many details you thought would bore the reader but don’t by a long shot. That story will contain feelings and truths you hadn’t felt and thought before you wrote and shared your writing with others.

Where do you find this kind of support? Checking in with other people who write, whether in person or through their books and blog posts, articles, essays and poems is important. Here is one of my favorite blogs written by my colleague and co-author on Writing in a New Convertible: Farmlet: Living cheaply and richly on our teeney tiny farm in western Washington. Another of my favorites is by Brenda Miller and Holly Hughes authors of The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World. It is the part of the book’s website called Writing Practice.

1. There are many sources for online writer’s groups, with and without facilitation and instructors:

• Membership benefits and online seminars through Writing It Real
• Membership benefits and online seminars through Story Circle Network
• Membership benefits and online seminars through International Association of Journal Writers
• Membership benefits and online seminars through International Association of Memoir Writers
• Free writing groups and online classes through writers.com

2. There are sites that have discussions about the trials and tribulations of writing memoir. One is She Writes.

3. There are sites that will help you get in the mood to write. Here are a few to read through: postsecret.com , Poetry Daily, Poetry Foundation, and The Race Card Project site from NPR’s Michele Norris’ project.

4. If you are looking for people to meet with in person, contact your local arts commission, library, bookstore, literary arts or writers’ center or college’s creative writing department. You can also locate memoir writer’s meet up groups in your area.

5. Although stocking up on writing books has us run the risk of spending writing time reading about writing rather than writing, there are some excellent books on writing from personal experience that will not only inspire you but help you get down to the writing.

My current favorites among instructional books are these:

• The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World by Brenda Miller and                     Holly J. Hughes
• Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing edited by Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland
• Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teachers edited by Dinty W. Moore
• First Up: Barnstorming for Poetry by Samuel Green
• Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers by Kate Hopper
• Writing and Publishing Personal Essays by Sheila Bender
• Creative Writing Demystified by Sheila Bender
• The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts into Words by Arthur Plotnik
• Better than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives by Arthur Plotknik
• Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman
• Black Milk by Elif Shafak (a memoir that includes biographies of women writers)

Free online journals and libraries of writing also offer help by presenting models that inspire:

• Brevity Magazine
• Narrative Magazine
• Tiny Lights Flash in the Pan
• Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies Open Letters to People or Entities     Who Are Unlikely to Respond
• The Vocabula Review
• Memoir Journal
• Poetry Foundation
• Midlife Collage

Tip #5 — Keep the Spirit

In the words of Kim Stafford, “Memory hidden becomes a fossil; memory spoken or written becomes a lens.” I would say, “especially” written, because when we write, we reflect and shape and learn more than we thought we knew.

Go forth and let your writing multiple!