Ways to Write the Self
“To be a person is to have a story to tell.” – Isak Dinesen
“It still comes as a shock to realize that I don’t write about what I know, but in order to find out what I know.” – Patricia Hampl
Memoir Writing
autobiographical writing that explores a particular theme, relationship, or part of your life
A nicely succinct definition of the difference between autobiography and memoir:
“An autobiography is the story of a life. . . . Memoir, on the hand, is a story from a life.” – Writing the Memoir, Judith Barrington
Insight about what memoir writing asks of us:
“Memoir is the intersection of narration and reflection, of story-telling and essay writing. It can present its story and consider the meaning of the story. The first commandment of fiction—Show, Don’t Tell—is not part the memoirist’s faith. Memoirists must show and tell.” – “Memory and Imagination,” Patricia Hampl
“The memoirist need not necessarily know what she thinks about her subject but she must be trying to find out; she may never arrive at a definitive verdict, but she must be willing to share her intellectual and emotional quest for answers.” – Writing the Memoir, Judith Barrington
“A good memoir requires two elements – one of art, the other of craft. The first element is integrity of intention. Memoir is the best search mechanism that writers are given. Memoir is how we try to makes sense of who we are, who we once were, and what values and heritage shaped us. If a writer seriously embarks on that quest, readers will be nourished by the journey, bringing along many associations with quests of their own.
The other element is carpentry. Good memoirs are a careful act of construction. We think that an interesting life will simply fall into place on the page. It won’t. . . . . Memoir writers must manufacture a text, imposing a narrative order on a jumble of half-remembered events. With that feat of manipulation they arrive at a truth that is theirs alone, not quite like that of anybody else who was present at the same events.” – Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, edited by William Zinsser
Therapeutic writing
short, informal writing for the purpose of releasing feelings, working through an experience, and gaining insight. It may also be for sharing with others who have had similar experiences. Journaling can be a form of therapeutic writing.
Some persuasive reasons to engage in therapeutic writing:
“What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born in the moment
When we accumulated silent things within us.”
– Gaston Bachelard
“What we remember, wrote the poet who was my first teacher of the art, can be changed. What we forget we are always. Dick was right: We live in the stories we tell; the stories we don’t tell live us. What you don’t allow yourself to know controls and determines; whatever’s held to the light “can be changed”—not the facts, of course, but how we understand them, how we live with them. Everyone will be filled by grief, distorted by sorrow; that’s the nature of being a daughter or a son, as our parents are also. What matters is what we learn to make of what happens to us.”
And we learn to make, I think, by telling. Held to the light of common scrutiny, nothing’s ever quite as unique as our shame and sorrow could have us think. But if you don’t say it, you’re alone with it, and the singularity of your story seems immense, intractable. – Firefly, Mark Doty
“What is healing but a shift of perspective?” – Mark Doty
Legacy writing
capturing moments and stories from your life in writing to share with family and friends
The invitation:
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.” – Anais Nin
“It seems to me that writing is a marvelous way of making sense of one’s life, both for the writer and for the reader.” – John Cheever
“The way we tell our life story is the way we begin to live our life.” – Maureen Murdock
“The longing to tell one’s story and the process of telling is symbolically a gesture of longing to recover the past in such a way that one experiences both a sense of reunion and sense of release.” – bell hooks, Remembered Rapture
Spiritual Will
a written record of your wisdom, life lessons and experiences to leave behind for loved ones
Food for thought:
“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it you will live along some distant day into your answers.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance—not what you did in a certain situation but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.” – “How to Write a Memoir,” William Zinsser
“We are all trying to find a past that belongs to us. To assure ourselves that we are not alone. Thinking we can shed light on the darkness that was the world before out birth, that will be the world after our death. – Mary Gordon, The Shadow Man
“Facts can exist without human intelligence but truth cannot.” – Toni Morrison, interview with William Zinsser