INTRODUCTION:
You are uniquely unique and no one in the past or future was or will be the exact equivalent of you. This philosophy can be extended to your life and the experiences that understood it, in terms of circumstances, time, participation of other people, your point of view, strengths, weaknesses, reactions, feelings, emotions and conclusions. There is nothing more selfless than using that life, or at least part of it, to improve, inspire, or benefit others. The number of experiences, when considered in hindsight, must be staggering in number and this was expressed by the name of a writing course once offered at Hofstra University on Long Island called “Everyone Has a Story to Tell. “. As you read this, start thinking about what yours might be.
Who do you know more about than yourself? Even if you think there are parts and aspects of yourself that you have lost touch with, or that you never knew at all, writing short or long memories can remedy that. When Oprah Winfrey tried to determine what was most important to a human being, the consensus she received was “That I matter!” Writing a memoir is a way of showing that you do.
“Having a voice is having a self, and having a self is powerful,” wrote Bill Roorbach in “Writing Life Stories: Turning Memories into Memories, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature” (Writer’s Digest Books, 2008, p. 18).
And Socrates wrote: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
THE ANALYZED MEMORY:
Depending on whether you write for yourself or for a wider audience, what matters most in a memoir is not necessarily what happened, but what it meant to you.
“What happened to the memoir is not what matters,” according to Jane Taylor McDonnell in her book, “Living to Tell the Story” (Penguin Books, 1998, p. Viii); “It only matters what the author of the memoirs does about what happened.”
This may not make the subtle difference that you initially perceive.
Take a look at the following two lines to compare this concept:
1). What happened: As I was walking along the beach on a sweltering late summer day, I looked out at the ocean.
2). Makes it happen: When I was walking along the beach on a sweltering late summer day, I looked out at the ocean, realizing the infinity of the world and with that infinity, for the first time, I saw God.
After taking your readers on a journey you have already taken, you must take them to the same destination as yours. This is not necessarily physical. Rather, it is a destination for learning, perception, new perspective, understanding, and wisdom, allowing both reader and memoir reader to interpret, classify, and conclude what happened to them. The journey itself can be intensely pleasant or intensely painful.
In essence, a memoir illustrates “This I learned by experiencing that.”
“The memoirist, like the poet and novelist, must engage with the world because engagement creates experience (and) experience creates wisdom …” McDonnell continues (p. Viii).
Writing a memoir recovers lost memories, captures events, and releases emotions, allowing the author to delve into himself and achieve a degree of therapeutic value. Ultimately, it can heal.
“We … all aspire to become creators of meaning,” according to Eric Maisel in his book, “Deep Writing: 7 Principles That Bring Ideas To Life” (Jeremy P. Tarcher / Putnam, 1999, p. 5). “The more we want to ‘shape our destiny’, as Albert Camus put it, the more we are concerned with the meaning we give or fail to give. A meaning creator is a person who takes their humanity and experiences and tries to put together coherently, ingenious, beautiful, but at least in some way, for her own sake and for the sake of others. That product may or may not change the world, or even reach the world. But a creator of meaning can do nothing less than fight to make sense, because making sense is a moral imperative. “
You, expressed in the first person singular (“I”), are both the experiencing person and the narrator and therefore directly engages the reader.
“A memory is a true story, a narrative work constructed directly from the writer’s memory, with an added element of creative inquiry …” Roorbach also wrote (p. 13). “The writer is also the protagonist, the person to whom the events of history happen … (She) arises and exists only through the first person singular: the self remembering.”
“… The reader shares two names with the writer: me and I,” he later wrote (p. 158). “And although the identification process is largely subconscious, a powerful connection between reader and writer is forged in the continual invocation of the self that is the first person,” creating that soul-to-soul link.
MEMORY MECHANICS:
Therefore, the reports should contain the following elements.
1), the memoirs must be written in the first person singular, that is, say “I”,
2). It must be a container for the author’s perception.
It should take the reader on a journey. The author’s work must have a specific beginning, middle, and end.
3). The theme must be universal.
4). The author’s life interests him because it is about him. However, your memories should appeal to others.
5). A memoir should impart some knowledge, understanding, or perception at the end of the reader’s journey, that is, I learned this by experiencing that.
Article sources:
Maisel, Eric. “Deep writing: 7 principles that bring ideas to life”. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher / Putnam, 1999.
McDonnell, Jane Taylor. “Live to tell the story.” New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Roorbach, Bill, with Kristen Keckler, PhD. “Writing life stories: how to turn memories into memories, ideas into essays and life into literature”. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2008.
