Three Starter Exercises for Writing a Dramatic Memoir

I was texting with Susan earlier (as is the custom of people like her in her twenties.   Me?  I'd rather pick up a phone.  But times change...), discussing how she might get started on her book project -- her journey through addiction and recovery as a college student.  The more we bounced ideas back and forth, the more I wondered if there were some ideas that might be helpful for other writers too.
      Dramatic memoirs cover all kinds of territory:  body image, sexuality, abuse, addiction, relationships.  Maybe you experienced a big life event -- a house burning down, an extraordinary animal touching your life, a major life accomplishment at an unusual age. . . if you wish to process an experience or accomplishment in a really thorough, satisfying, and "witnessed" way, memoir is an amazing way to do it.
      Whatever your desired terrain, if you feel you have a story to tell, there's a gift for you in the telling (as well as for the reader in the reading!).  If you've been putting off writing your memoir, maybe these kick-off exercises can help you start moving forward and creating momentum.
     Here are three things to get you rolling on the story that you (and only you) are meant to tell.


Three Exercises for Starting Your Dramatic Memoir 

1.  DEFINE your audience, DEFINE your message. 
Definition Exercise:  Start by writing a letter to your ideal reader -- speak to them casually and honestly, and tell them three things:  why you're writing this story or instruction, what they can expect to get out of it, and what kind of things you're going to cover.

Definition Exercise -- alternate option:  If you're having trouble figuring out who your reader is, write this letter to a younger version of yourself.  Tell yourself the things you wished you would have known back in the day.  Tell it as if you only want to save yourself hassles and unwieldy lessons you'd rather not have had to learn personally.  [From an energetic point of view, you're actually (somehow) helping your younger self in a real way by doing it from this perspective.  It might sound a little 'out there', but the shamans have been working with the idea of parallel selves for centuries.]


2.  Use CONTRAST for drama, validation, and suspense.
Contrast Exercise:  First, write a page about a time when you were in deep trouble with your topic.  Write about when things were a MESS -- when your assumptions were leading you down terrible paths, you were broke, you were unsuccessful, you were ready to tear your hair out -- any time when things were hugely challengin.  Be crazy honest with the details and crappiness of the whole situation.  Readers respond to authenticity, and they'll sense sugar-coating in a second.  
     After you've done this, write a page about a moment when your natural state or your enhanced knowledge, success, skills, confidence -- whatever -- had you in a place free of chaos and full of contentment.
     Then look at ways you might play these contrasting versions of yourself against each other.  Maybe you could structure your project so that it starts out with a scene of you in complete embarrassment or distress, then flashback to a time when everything was smooth;  the bulk of your story might be how one situation morphed into the other.  Or perhaps, you'll start out with a description of the near-ideal life you're leading now, and work backwards to show how it wasn't always this way.


3.  Get comfortable with showing your VULNERABILITIES. 
One worry many of us writers have is that we need to have all the answers.  We need to not only be able to write about life (we imagine), but to also instruct on it.  You don't need to be perfect.  You don't need to have all the answers, or know all the hows around what happened, or even to do extensive research on the why's.
     Just tell your story.  Be honest.  The truth disarms and enthralls the reader.  And the truth is enough.  Any more or any less is too much and too little.  Include details.  You'll think they won't mean anything to anyone else, but you're mistaken.  They mean everything -- they're the way that a reader will shockingly note that "oh my God, this is ME I'm reading about."
     Release the idea that your parents, friends, or anyone else will read this and judge you.  They're either already judging you, or they don't give a damn, or they love you and will appreciate your journey more for knowing you better.  They probably know (or suspect) more about your past than you think, anyway.  Set the record straight.  Let it be a morality tale, if there are some really sordid parts.  Give your parents a "censored version" with some pages ripped out, if you're really that concerned about their responses.
      Vulnerability Exercise:  Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper.  On one side, list things that make you feel good about yourself.  On the other side, list things that make you feel bad/ vulnerable/ embarrassed/ ashamed about yourself.  When your lists are complete, show where your self-esteem and difficult life experiences are connected by drawing lines that show where elements from the "vulnerability side" lead to elements on the "feel good" side.
      Most lingering vulnerabilities have a resonance in our present life that can be positive;  if we feel resolutely crappy about something, perhaps we haven't invested the time in acknowledging its lesson or gift.  (i.e. Maybe your stuttering as a child led to your being an excellent listener as an adult.  Maybe your money screw ups as a twenty-something led to a wisdom and consciousness with money that serves you now.)
      If you have trouble finding the connection, play with the idea that you are a character in the story of your life.  Ask yourself why you might put a specific obstacle / flaw / villain into the life of your character.  What could they learn or gain from it?  How could they grow from it's presence?  See if this offers any insights into the 'story' you hold as your own.

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Most importantly, just START.  Start jotting down snippets of things you want to include in a memoir -- parts of conversations, images, details -- anything that would create a fuller view of your life in the moments you choose to share.  Throw them in a box if you can't get to them now, or start a doc on your computer with an innocuous name if you're worried about snoopers.  Start an anonymous blog to really organize your thoughts in an archival way.

If you have a story to tell, start deciding how you're going to tell it.  The world is waiting.

xo
mb

Five Things I'm Thankful For Today:
1.  The nice rain all afternoon.
2.  Daisy's cool drawings (suddenly representational!) of animals today.
3.  The midday bubble bath.
4.  Our impromptu pizza gathering at Daly on Thursday.
5.  The adventure of considering ourselves in different homes and what each one means, feels like.

Our Collective Creative Future

I was reading the "Rise of the Tablet" piece in Wired Magazine the other day, and there was a section where a number of people-in-the-know remarked about how the tablet would change the world. It got me thinking about all the ways our creative pasts and futures are constantly changing because of technology. Every day, it seems there are new ways we can create, chronicle, connect, communicate, comment . . . if the blank page sometimes seems daunting, perhaps the blank screen -- with all its potential opinionated audiences -- is destined to become even more so. 

The Universal Peanut Gallery
This started me thinking about the concept of collective book responses -- digital 'scribbling' in the margins by the masses -- that in theory could become part of the ebook reading experience. Will we begin to share thoughts in increasingly narrow territory -- lending our thoughts on chapters, lines, or phrases to anyone who's interested? Will you soon have the choice to import my (and anyone else's) underlines/bookmarks/comments as part of a universal readership community? Will we get to select "pre-readers" with whom we feel most aligned, so as to have our reading guided in the direction that we prefer (much like we currently choose our form of news coverage)? 

I'm not against sharing opinions and information. Right now, many of us delight in the fairly new ability to instantly remark to each other on the products, links, videos, and images on our Facebook pages and blogs. We leave comments on commercial sites about the products we liked (or more likely, didn't like). We tweet about a meal as we're eating it, a show as we're seeing it. Which is fine. But here's the rub: the lag time between experience and the construction of our responses is shortening. There's increasing pressure to decide / give a verdict / comment on everything, even before the experience is complete. Will future watchers ever even get to the end of that Robert Altman movie with the brilliant ending that somehow ties everything together in an imaginative, unexpected way? Will gallery shows that get panned early miss out on the reviewers that might have found it thrilling? 

Are we headed toward a kind of "race" to set the opinion on a piece? Are we already there? Is there room for pieces other than the best-sellers, the most-emailed, the top downloads?

A Morality Tale from the Music Business
I remember getting my first Shawn Colvin album in 1992. I'd bought the CD before my waitress shift at Tommy Nevin's in Evanston, and after work, I rushed home to listen to it. I had to lay with my head kind of hanging off the side of my bed so that the headphones could reach my stereo. I listened to the whole Fat City album that way, contorted but enthralled by the way Colvin used her voice and lyrics. I felt I kind of knew her after listening to the whole record. The last song, "I Don't Know Why," was a quiet and spare one, and immediately became part of my set at the coffeehouse where I'd started performing regularly. It's still one of my favorite songs.

Today, I would probably go to iTunes and look up Shawn Colvin. A screen would automatically pop up with the most popular downloads. I'd likely click on a few of those and choose some to add to my playlist. I wouldn't even see, "I Don't Know Why," let alone hear it. 

There's something to be said for respecting the arc of a complete collection of music (or painting show, or book of stories, or anything else). We don't respect the vision, this arc, unless we allow ourselves to have a full creative experience before being pulled out of the moment in order to comment on it. In theater, audiences are expected to "suspend belief" in order to become fully immersed in the imagination of the moment. Perhaps we might develop a practice of suspending artistic judgement in a similar way.

In the music industry, there used to be business cycles alternately more dependent on the "Album model" or the "Single Model." The album model hinged on the idea that a band or artist had a full album of very high-quality songs -- if not a hooky single -- and lifetime of quality work ahead; record companies trusted that buyers would fall in love with an artist and continue buying their albums over time (artists like James Taylor and Billy Joel would fit this description). The single model focused more on the one-hit-wonder -- the band that had one terrific song that might go huge! but perhaps they didn't have the chops to follow up with a career's worth of other material. (Many sixties' war song one-hit-wonders and fifties' duwop hits would be in this category.) There is a place for both kinds of music in our lives -- we all enjoy an instantly catchy song, and I believe (well, I hope) there's also a craving for the deeper, more resonant songs that might take a few listens to really understand. Dessert and dinner, right? We enjoy both. 

But for the last several years, we've been in a hard and determined single model cycle. With the advent of single-song downloads and the often anonymous transfer of a favorite track from one friend to another, the music industry has discovered that you can't live on dessert.  It's a mess.  Even the veterans who've been shouting from the rooftops that we need to cultivate longer-term acts aren't heard.  We're so full on one dessert after another that we've lost our appetite for dinner. 

As Creators
We can find innovative ways to keep our readers/listeners/viewers engaged as long as we feel its necessary for the piece. We can opt out of importing others' opinions and insights until we've had a chance to develop our own. We can resist the urge to instantly publish the snap judgements we may ourselves make about other people's works. 

Think of it as good posting karma. 

Be well. Make cool stuff. See you soon. 

Best wishes, 
mb

Five Things I'm Thankful for Today:
1. My wifi connection hasn't gone out in the middle of anything critical -- yah!
2. A cool Haro opportunity that's coming to fruition -- thanks mtl!
3. The prospect of a nap in an hour or two.
4. Being back in Utah after a long visit in Chicago.
5. Possibilities, keeping me energized and excited.

Why Does Creativity Matter?

Everyday we get thousands of media messages about how to be more healthy, more attractive, more loved, more respected.  We get why these traits matter, right?  Evolutionarily, our reptilian brains are programmed to want to survive, to want to reproduce, be a valued part of the clan.  But as we have (hopefully) evolved more as a human race, new desires come up.  We want to find meaning and purpose in our lives.  We want to matter.  We want to use our unique consciousness to affect our environments and the patterns of our days.  And this is where creativity comes in.  

Creativity matters because:

1.  Creativity demands intention.  It asks that we make choices to support a vision.  It's not the paint that makes a room look fun and creative, it's the choices of color, texture, design, and mood that the painter made.  The painter had a vision and then made the choices to support that vision.  People who claim they 'just aren't that creative' are more likely to be a bit afraid than uncreative, I think.  If we are hesitant to claim our visions for ourselves (both in the senses that we 'own' them and that we'll take responsibility for bringing them to life), it's likely that big creative happenings won't be taking place in our gardens, kitchens, and laptops.  Be BRAVE.  OWN your inspired ideas.  And make the choices to allow them to show WHO YOU ARE and WHERE YOU'RE GOING.  It's okay.  You'll be okay.   (You'll be better than okay!)

2.  Creativity helps us filter the overwhelming amount of information we get each day.  We live in a world where we're exposed to billions of bits of information every day.  We're surrounded by media:  there's whatever's on TV, the passive scrolling through the never-ending feeds on Facebook or Twitter, the radio or news chattering on in the car or cafe.  We can move through our days in a laid-back mode of reacting to what media happens to find us, or decide that we'll MAKE (or create) something of the day, the hour, the moment by looking for what we're inspired to find.  We can choose what we wish to learn about or what question we want to resolve for ourselves.  And then we can decide what to DO with that information.  "But what if I miss something?" You ask.  "What if something I'm supposed to know doesn't get to me because I filtered it out...?"   Anything you need to know will find you.   It will find you faster if you're not anesthetized by constant excess information.  When you are very clear about what you want to do, be, or have, it's like the universe sets up a Google Alert to tell you exactly how to find whatever you need for your next steps.  Trust that if you leap, there will be one great big fat pile of information to cushion your fall in exactly the right way.

3.  Creativity is fun, dammit!   Why go through life in the rote, bland, predictable way we could, when there are so many fantastic ways to customize it and make it our own most delightful way?  I've heard there are over 87,000 possible ways to order a beverage at Starbucks, yet how many people order virtually the same thing every time they walk into their favorite cafe?  Reach out.  Try something new.  Shake it up.  Be less predictable, especially to yourself.  Surprise yourself by answering, "Sure!" when you'd normally deflect.  Let your inner nutty teenager take over from time to time and do something silly and dorky and laughable.  If you don't explore, you don't know if where you are is where you want to be.  Unclench!  Very few of the things that seem so important to us today will cause even a blip in the memories of our lives five years from now.  Make your rooms and your food and everything else pretty and fun and representative of your fabulous self!  You are worth it and wonderful!

4.  The time you take for creativity returns to you in increased energy.  When we are clear about what we want and open to new things, we are able to infuse our lives and spaces with freshness and vibrant energy.  We can use classic creative tools -- color, sound, arrangement, aroma, texture -- to personalize what makes us feel GOOD.  And when we feel good, it's hard to hold onto our overwhelmed, pouting, martyr-y persona who doesn't want to do anything or go anywhere.  When we're happy, we feel more willing to take chances and be generous to ourselves and others.  So go make yourself happy.  Buy the flowers.  Turn on the music that makes you sing along.  Light the candle, put on the good sheets, eat something insanely delicious, and leave any snag of guilt behind.  This is for your mental and energetic health.

Now go kick some creative ass.  : )


Five things I'm thankful for today:
1.  More people joining the FB Kick-Ass Creative page everyday -- I love the new comments!
2.  The catching up I've been able to do all morning.  Ahhhhh, sigh of delight and relief.
3.  The lunch I'm going to have in about ten minutes.
4.  Daisy's sweet hugs this morning.
5.  My swanky Gucci glasses from Dena.  Loving them, and feeling very intellectual!

Digital quagmire

Okay, so being as right-brained as I happily am most of the time, I tend to leave the intensely linear/left-brained tasks of life undone as long as possible.  Add to this that I'm a fan of doing the fun parts of any task FIRST, both because I think it's the right thing to do energetically, as well as because it's the FUN PART.

Managing my social networking has put me in this spot over the last few days.  I like the reading, relating, interesting posts and links of being on Facebook and Twitter, etc, but keeping up with the many places we can gather in the modern world can get heavy.  I don't want to write for the sake of just writing. . . I want to share something that feels germane to share, to do the inspired thing, not the should/must/have to of communicating because it's what everyone else is doing or tells us we need to be doing.

Even the tools meant to help us manage social media have me in a digital quagmire.  I can link my site to post updates on FB and Twitter, and have FB and Twitter update feeds on my sites, and I can coordinate some online spots to grab the info from an upcoming event or appearance in one swooping click, but NOT ALL.  So I'm trying to remember which sites have info from which other sites, which ones do I need to update manually, which do I (uh oh) already have an auto-update mode set up that I might have forgotten about that is going to create an endless loop of posting and notifying somewhere else.  Ugh.  I know the easy solution might seem to be to hire someone talented at these things (a grade-school kid in my neighborhood sounds better suited to it than I feel right now) but I want to do it myself, be able to do it without an intermediary.

I've made this big fun colorful flow chart trying to map out what's going where and what's updating what, but I'm still trying to sort it all out.  Anyone with any insights on this, please HELP.  I love you already.  : )

Five Things I'm Thankful For Today:
1.  That I got in a good workout today, even though it's the kind of day that makes you want to burrow.
2.  That Mark is making such great progress on some big house projects!
3.  That Daisy seems back to her sweet self after a couple weird whiney days.
4.  That the library's guinea pig, "Sweet Pea" was so friendly and curious about Daisy.
5.  That it's May.  New www.astrologyzone.com forecast posted -- I love those!