2 Classic Secrets to Jumpstart Your Memoir

         My guest today, Nicole Ayers, is someone you might know from her several guest spots on my blog Tossing It Out.   She also contributed a series of Friday posts to the Blogging from A to Z Challenge blog and now is an official Challenge co-host.   You can also find Nicole at her own blog The Madlab Post.  

2 Classic Secrets to Jumpstart Your Memoir

Dear Writer,

      I know memoirs seem like one of the most daunting pieces of literary material to complete. It’s not easy to just sit down and recap an entire life’s worth of experiences -- especially in a short timeframe. When you’re dealing with a case of writer’s block or self-doubt in this work, I want you to remember that it can be done with little to no hassle. Try breaking it into sections using an old, but efficient, method of short-form writing – Letters. We’re already accustomed to writing letters for many reasons – to file complaints, land a job, catch up with long distance friends and family or to provide personal and professional references when necessary. In an age when you’re so comfortable crafting text messages, social media updates and even blog posts without a sweat, why not apply similar principles to the very work that will become part of your legacy?

       The secret to creating a good memoir is by writing from the heart, in a voice grounded on truth, self-awareness, openness and sincerity. No other work that I know of depicts this practice than the dramatic picture “The Bridges of Madison County,” directed by Clint Eastwood. Yes, I am aware it’s based on Robert James Waller’s novel, but I did not read that book – I watched its film adaptation, a classic that earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. In “The Bridges of Madison County,” two siblings find love letters revealing an affair between their mother Francesca and a National Geographic photographer named Robert Kincaid. They also find a letter she wrote to them, along with diaries chronicling her love affair. Though hard to read and even more difficult to accept, the children eventually learn more about their mother in her death than they knew when she was alive – thanks to those letters and diaries that, unknowingly, also helped them find clarity in the state of their own lives and relationships.

       Francesca’s letter to her children and accompanying diaries were just as powerful as the letters she received from Robert because they were all honest. Their lasting effect, however, came from their ability to write with the recipient of said letters in mind. That is why I urge you to consider who you’re writing to first, by crafting letters that are addressed to your reader, in a figurative sense.

       What kind of memoir are you writing? Will it be personal, formal or somewhere in the middle? Identifying the type of reader(s) your memoir is intended for also clarifies any boundaries that you will or won’t cross. Knowing where you stand can make the next part – finding your tone – much easier to figure out. It can be shaped by writing letters to real or imaginary people. They can be living or dead, so long as their human presence in your mind aids in the task of putting words on paper -- or screen. This person should be someone you trust, which will make your letter writing come from a genuine place. The more comfortable you are communicating thoughts, feelings and experiences, the more letters you will be able to complete.

        The secret to those powerful letters in “Bridges of Madison County” are also in the bits and pieces of one woman’s life puzzle. Francesca’s focus on a specific segment of her life – the affair-- made it easier for this country gal’s children to honor her request for cremation and dispersal of ashes. It’s a wonder, the amount of confusion or torn decisions Francesca would have caused if she also wrote accounts of her marriage to their father. This is a prime example of how grouping letters around a portion of your life at a time can result in more interesting material –possibly even making room for an extended volume of work. I did just that in 2012 when I mailed a letter titled My Journey to Bare Bones to one of my filmmaking buddies in Australia.

       The letter, about all the conflicts I endured while turning one of my screenplays into an award-winning short film, was a bit lengthy and made me wonder if it was even worth writing at all. This filmmaker colleague told me that my letter was amazing to read and then suggested that I turn it into a script. His response further illustrates that great material can be adapted to form new works. It also makes me wonder how many memoirs could result from my writing production notes in letter form, for every film I make or even the film festivals I attend.

       Who says your memoir has to be complete in one book? Try writing a series of letters that capture one specific part of your life and then repeat the process, focusing on another area. When finished, you will have material that can be used to assemble an entire memoir – in whole or in part.

Sincerely,

Nicole Ayers

Writer & Director of the Short Film, “Abyss”

P. S.--

I’m raising funds on IndieGoGo for my 2013 film festival and television premieres of a new film called “Abyss.” If you contribute $5 or more by Saturday February 23rd, I will mail you a Secret Perk: My Journey to Bare Bones, a letter chronicling the screenwriting, production and film festival experiences surrounding one of the first movies I ever made that was shown in a theater. It is an exclusive perk, only available for a limited time to select people, including Wrote by Rote readers. Check out my campaign page for more information.  Go to:  Nicole's Film project

        Please at least check out the above link to read about Nicole's film project.   Even if you can't help with the funding, you can help by telling others about it.  Tweet it, put it on Facebook, announce it anywhere you can think of.  Wouldn't it be cool to be able to say you helped Nicole get her film financed.  Oscars anyone?

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Traveling the Musical Time Machine

        One of the more effective stimuli that prompt past memories are the songs from our past.  How many times have you heard a song that took you back to some special time in your life?  Often I'll be in the grocery store or driving in my car and hear a song that sparks an event in the past, a special person, or a place that I associate with that song.   Music can be like a smell, a photograph or anything else that takes us back into our past.

        These thoughts are inspired as I listen to a compilation CD of pop songs recorded between 1957 and 1972.   This particular CD is volume 5 of a series called "Hey!  Look What I Found".   It's a CD that I found on Amazon a few years back when I was looking for a favorite song called "Look for a Star".   The internet is great for digging up things like that and Amazon seems to be the most comprehensive source for a lot of obscure things one might be looking for.  In fact, I found the song I was looking for on two different compilation albums and each contained rival versions by two different artists.

         The song "Look for a Star" came out in 1960.  I didn't hear it until late 1963 or early 1964 when I went with my father to see a film called Circus of Horrors.  I guess the song stood out for me so much because it is used several times in the film and it's a rather nice song that appealed to my taste.  In 1965 I found a 45 record version of the song in the cut-out bin at a Sears store.  I enjoyed my vinyl copy until 1969 when I gave away all my 45's, a move I later regretted.  But 45's were no longer in vogue and I was more into the LP albums.

        The CD I now own is kind of a fun recording.  I'm not familiar with many of the songs or artists.  Some I do recall hearing in my younger days.   One interesting cut is "Stand By Me" as performed by Cassius Clay.  Some of you may not know this singer by this name since he was not really known for his singing, but for his boxing abilities and the name he is now known by--Muhammad Ali.  Then there is a Kenny Rogers recording that was released in 1958.  I had no idea that Rogers had done any recordings prior to his rock/pop stint with the First Edition and then later in his most famous role as a country/pop superstar.

        Compilation albums such as this one can be entertaining and often a revelatory insight into our own pasts.  Listening to a collection such as this one can be reminded of days gone by and learn a bit of music history at the same time.  Those of you with collections of older music undoubtedly enjoy kicking back sometimes just to get lost in the music and dream away.

        A fun exercise you might want to try is to compile a soundtrack of your life.  This makes a fun blog post and a nice way to tell a bit about your own life story.   I've actually done two of these on my main blog.  You can see mine at The Soundtrack of My Life and the follow-up post The Soundtrack of My Life (Number Two).  If you decide to do one of your own, please let me know so I can be sure not to miss it. Have fun with it.  Music is a great way to journey back into your past.

        Have you put together your own life soundtrack?   What is the music that evokes the most memories for you?    Do you ever hear a song come on when you don't expect it and have it dig deep into you soul and memory?

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“Here I Am” - A Personal Documentary

         Last year I was pleased to have a guest visit from Jane Shafron who is co-founder of the video biography service Your Story Here.   She has returned to tell us about one of her latest projects.

"Here I Am"--A Personal Documentary

It's been one whole year since I was last honored with an invitation to write a guest blog for “Wrote By Rote” and things have been busy over here in video memoir land!

One project that kept me busy - and completely knocked my socks off - was recording the stories of twelve seniors all living in San Bernardino County here in Southern California. Little did I know just what a diverse and astonishing group they would turn out to be...

Gordon Ayers Documentary

Take Gordon Ayers: Blind in one eye from a childhood accident, he never expected overseas duty - avenging Pearl Harbor. So he decided to get married. Eleven days later, and for the next 25 months, he was on board ship fighting island to island all the way to Okinawa. He laughs now at the improbability of it all.

Next up was Aiko Uyeno, who stepped up right after Gordon. Of Japanese extraction, she was born in Arlington, California and was a loyal American high school junior. She was rounded up by the FBI, along with her family, to be interred in barracks in the Arizona hinterlands for the duration of WWII.

These, and the other ten life stories unfolded in front of my whirring video camera as part of Chaffey College and the Wignall Museum's special exhibition “When I'm Sixty-Four”. Originally conceived as an oral history project involving Storycorps, I volunteered to video record the stories from locals 64 years and older who had expressed interest in participating.

Some of the participants of the "Here I Am" project

  

Although the interviews were brief – around 30 minutes each - the result is a cornucopia of personal and cultural history, and a 20 minute personal documentary entitled “Here I Am – Extraordinary Lives in the Inland Empire” which premiered and played at the the exhibition. Chaffey College plans to use the material as part of their esteemed “Gerontology” degree program.

Not all the “When I'm Sixty-Four” stories I recorded were dark. One participant, Mary Martha Barkley, remembers learning to drive when she was just nine years old – and getting her license shortly after. “I was tall as a child,” she shrugs in the documentary.

Pat Yeates grew up poor in Pittsburgh. “It was like Cinderella Man”, she says. “You know, we were so cold we had to use our coats as blankets” Her ticket out was dance. And when Pat was just seventeen she won a place with the famous Ice Capades and went on tour all across North America.

Arpad Sebok

And the stories keep coming: Arpad Sebok from Ontario defected from Soviet controlled Hungary by stealing a MIG17 and flying it to Belgium! The plane is now at the Smithsonian.

As a boy in his native Italy, Alta Loma resident Fred Roccatani dodged Allied bombs, only to be saved by the enemy – a German tank commander. And Donna Ambrogi from Claremont tells how she capped a life time of service by helping to usher in democracy in South Africa.

When I finished the editing, I presented each of the participants with a DVD of their entire interview as well as a copy of the short documentary with snippets of all their lives: “Here I Am – Extraordinary Lives in the Inland Empire”.

Video memoirs and personal documentaries are not for everyone. And you can't really replace the depth and detail that a written memoir can contain. But for me, memoirs are never really an “either/or” proposition. I am hoping that each of our participants will be motivated to record their whole life stories, in whatever form is most comfortable for them. Either way, these astonishing seniors from the Inland Empire will never be forgotten!

Jane Shafron is a video biographer who co-founded Your Story Here LLC Video Memoir, a video production company that specializes in preserving personal and family history. Based in Orange County CA, her award-winning films have been screened in festivals in the United States and Canada. Jane is on the Board of Directors of the Association of Personal Historians. She regularly writes to her blog Video Biography Centraland can be contacted on 949-742-2755 or through her website.

The Working Years: Out on Our Own

The life stages (beach picture, beach scene in Wiek) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

           This post is the third in the series The Stages of Life for the Purpose of Memoir.   In the introductory post I suggested that life can be broken down into four major stages when writing memoirs.  So far we have looked at Memories of Baby Life:  Do We Have Accurate Recall? and School Days: Building Who We Are.  You can click on the three links to read these posts if you missed them.

Leaving Home

          Whether we go on to work after high school or defer work to go to college first, most of us at some point will cut our ties with living in our parental home and move on to a life on our own.  These are typically the years of work.   Many of us will go on into relationships with others and often that will result in marriage and families as we become responsible for raising our own children.   No longer seen so much as children of our parents, we now have our own identities with new roles in which others see us.

           Leaving home often begins with going away to college, doing a stint in the military, or some adventure that is a preliminary step to our career life.  The adjustment of setting out on one's own can provide fine material for memoir.  These can be humorous times or periods of doubt, fear, and angst.   Whichever way we look at this transition stage, it can be a time filled with love, loss, and learning.  This part of our life is often a great story that we can share in order to help or entertain others and provide lessons in life to others who may need them for their own growth or to understand their own past.

Revealing Our Identity

         Eventually we enter into that period of life that most identifies who we are as others see us.   We may enter into the careers that bring us recognition in the circles of those who know us.  Our stories of how we made it in life and what we accomplished can be very interesting to others.  Those stories may consist of success or failures, but with the memoir we should be able to use the important experiences to help bring revelation to those who hear our tales.  Anecdotes about our working careers can teach others or stir emotions within them.   For many of us our jobs define who we are and give us a big part of our life stories.

         The current generation is not as rooted as previous generations when it comes to career.  Some of us may have worn many hats in our working life as we've hopped from job to job.  There are many stories in this scenario.  A memoir of work life can be many things and portrayed in many ways.  Whether the memoirist is attempting to entertain with humor or teach with instruction or whatever else, a mixed job bag can be like a diamond mine of writing possibilities.

         Adult life is not all work.  There can be stories of love, struggles with health, political involvement, parenting--you fill in your own blanks.  What was most significant during your most active adult years?   You may have a special story that you need to tell about those years.  Or you may have many stories.  The stories are there when you start digging for them and they all have the potential to be interesting.

           Do you think that our work is generally what most defines who we are?   What are some kinds of  stories that you think could be most helpful to others?    Can you think of examples of inspirational stories of working, parenting, or other aspects of adult life?    Do you prefer a memoir that is humorous, uplifting, or educational?

    

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The Fears We Inherit

fear (Photo credit: siette)

       We inherit many of our physical traits directly from our parents.  Our hair color, physical build, or facial features will more often than not be similar to how one of our parents looked.  Now I can look in the mirror and see a very distinct resemblance to my own father.  It's in the genes.

        Other aspects that may have been passed to us from our parents are not genetic, but cultural preferences, ethics, and beliefs about certain things.  Sometimes it may be societal while in other cases they be things that are mostly confined to our own family.  Mothers and fathers shape their kids to believe many things whether they intend to or not.

        Since I was a small child I've been told negative things about cats.  My father was never particularly fond of felines, but he never said much about the subject.  On the other hand my mother would tell eerie stories about cats and cat owners she had known in her life.  Many times she would come right out and say that she hated cats.  In turn I grew up intensely disliking cats and having a bit of a fear about them.

          My mother used to tell a story about how she almost drowned when she was a girl.  I can also remember riding in the car on a road that followed closely alongside a river and my mother being very afraid.  Sensing her fear, I too became afraid that we might run off the road into the water and drown.  We never went swimming many times when I was a small child so I had little experience with being in any water other than the bathtub.   My father was a very good swimmer, but I did not see him swim very many times.   Later when we moved to San Diego we would often go to the beach, but I would stay away from the water.  An aversion to large areas of water had already been instilled in me.  I actually never learned to swim until I was in college and took swimming as a physical education class.  Even now I am not a good swimmer and haven't been swimming in many years.  Being on a boat can make me very uncomfortable.  I am not excited about the prospect of having to swim.

           Many of my friends learned fix-it skills and craftsmanship from their dads.  My dad was never good at things like that and rarely did such work around the house.  His father had died when my dad was still fairly young so maybe it was partly for that reason that my father didn't acquire those kinds of skills.  Then again his father was a newspaperman and may not have done much in the way of work around the house either.  In any case, what basic skills I acquired I either learned on my own or from friends.  And believe me, I don't know much.  Now I have an unease about doing home repairs and will usually hire somebody to do it for me.   My fearing of making things worse if I do them is justified by some of my own bad past experiences.  Like my dad I am no handyman and it often scares me to think of trying.    

           These are all things I could overcome, but they are also part of who I am and have been.  I have acquired these attributes from my parents and I'm comfortable with it.  Years of habit and hearing the negatives about those things that I fear have made these fears very real for me.   In part it's my parents and now it's part of me.

             Are there fears that you have acquired from one of your parents?    Is there anything that one of your parents greatly feared that you are not at all afraid of?    Have you passed any aversions on to your own children?   If so, did you intend to pass them on?

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Times That You May Want to Forget That Can Be Worth Remembering

Metsu, Gabriel - Sick Child, the (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

          Being sick ain't much fun, but it sure can be memorable.   During a bout of illness we might wish the whole thing would go away and that we could just forget about it, but after it's all done it's another ordeal we've survived and it can sometimes make for some good stories.

           Our stories about being sick can be entertaining, frightening, or informative.  Few of us enjoy being sick, but a good story about sickness can be just the cure for whatever might be ailing us at the moment.  After all, sickness is a part of life and sometimes the cause of death.  There are many human stories related to sickness.

           My recent bout of illness was a big setback for me in my blogging activity.   I didn't get much done as far as work on writing and chores around the house, but I got a nice amount of reading done and managed to watch a few more movies than I normally would.  Other than that I spent a lot of time sleeping, sitting around drowsily, and then sleeping some more.  Then there was one evening spent in the emergency room.

            Never in my life had I had such a dizzy spell as I did in the event that led me to ask my wife to take me to the hospital.  She knew something serious was up.  I normally don't like going to a doctor and my few experiences with going to the ER have never been pleasant ones.  This time though I thought something serious was afoot.  They checked me out and gave me some Valium and Travel Sickness pills and put me on observation while blood tests were run.  Final prognosis?   I'm getting older and I was reacting to an ear infection.  This was a new reaction to ear problems for me, but now I guess I have a better grasp on what to do if it ever happens again.

           I remember times of illness in my life.  Not that I'm unhealthy or anything, but we all get sick sometimes and I can remember some of my own times.  I recall the Seven-Up, hot tea, and buttered toast that my mother used to give me when I was a child and home in bed sick instead of going to school.  Broth made from chicken bullion.  They all are things I still turn to when I feel badly.

           Then there was the time my sister had Scarlet Fever.  My parents were so upset and listening to them I was certain that she was going to die.  In retrospect I'm sure that the situation wasn't quite as serious as it seemed, though it was serious enough.  In a way I envied the attention she received, but I was glad I didn't contract the illness.

           In my adult years I've been fortunate not to have had many serious illnesses.  Often, as adults sometimes have to do, I'd just plod forward through sickness to continue doing whatever it was I had to do. As a business manager I frequently just worked through my sickness and let it run its course.  I might slow down, but I'd keep going when I had to and just collapse at home when I could.

          Thank goodness my kids were all healthy.   They didn't have many serious illnesses, which was good for me since I was a single father raising them on my own while trying to lead my work life.  There were a few times when I'd take one of them to my office and let them sleep on the couch there while I attended to business.  Sometimes we just have to improvise and do the best we can.

           There are memoirs completely about sickness--the travails and the victories and how it can all change our lives.   Or sickness can just be a part of the story.  Nearly all of us can tell a story about a time we were sick or about someone we know who suffered through being sick.  It's just another topic that we can consider when we're coming up with ideas about what we can write.

            Do you have some memorable stories about being sick?   Is there something in those stories that can provide a learning experience for others?    Have you had funny sickness experiences?   Do you often write when you are sick or do you tend to avoid writing during those times?

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Taking a Break--Not Feeling Well

Due to illness I'll be taking off this week.

However my current situation is a reminder of how illness--our own and that of others--can play a role in memoir writing.   I'll be posting on this topic in the future.  Perhaps some of you might think of your own stories.

Take care for now.
Arlee