Oh gosh. Busy times. Having failed to get a post out last week I find I’ve got all of 45 minutes left to me this Monday to achieve something! Perfectionism —> out of the window!
I was lucky last week Irene took it upon herself to join in on-line. Having a community of other memoir writers seems to be key at this stage of trying to tidy a first draft into something resembling a coherent story. Irene wrote about the effect the narrative of a memoir has on the self – the “I” in the narrative and what this might mean to the purpose of the memoir.
Co-incidentally ‘purpose’ is the biggest issue I feel I am grappling with. What is the purpose of my book? Who is my intended reader? And therefore where am I trying to end up? Answering these questions would help me jettison anything that is just background noise because writing this sort of memoir – one where the story is never quite over so long as I’m still living – could mean the writer makes the mistake of including everything that happened since survival.
I thought I was getting increasingly comfortable with it being about how survival is never over once it has been your main aim for a while; how it colours and flavours, interrupts and taints the everyday – I know that still sounds vague! I’m chewing it over with some of my course colleagues.
Irene’s look at the protagonist’s journey in memoir was helping me clarify a theme or virtual ribbon to weave through. I was moving away from the urgency of the initial survival episode, thinking my audience was those other longer term survivors I know share my slightly different and intense focus on life. But then contact from someone I value greatly has me right back at the beginning, 16 years ago, trying to answer the question for him – ‘how do you think you did it?’ Because he needs to know.
The plan for this week went out of the window this week but instead I’ve been revisiting visualisation amongst other things and pulling together something I hope is first aid for my friend. This time has been useful and productive in so many ways but I have to leave you with this vague update as I lay the jigsaw pieces out once more and attempt to see what the picture is. And which I is writing.
– Make sense to you? No, not to me yet either!
I have already written about the different versions I see of my self – some which have developed over time, some remain situational, it hadn’t occurred to me there might be academic study on this that might help me crystallise this part of my narrative. I’m really looking forward to Irene’s post tomorrow (she can’t quite make Mondays but that’s no problem) and hoping some greater perspective at least provides the boarders of what currently feels like a baked bean jigsaw puzzle!
Lisa Reiter - Sharing the Story 
May 17, 2016 at 2:47 am
I need to read more of your back posts and learn as much as I can from you. I read the memoir of Anita Moorjani and it moved me in an odd way. I wondered why she got well and I haven’t. What am I not doing? As a reader and also as a writer, it’s always part of my thought process. Finding uplifting ways to express that is a difficult task for me. More experience necessary.
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May 17, 2016 at 1:11 am
Sorry I am commenting so late in the piece. I thought I had done so but find I hadn’t. Glad to read you have written your final two sentences. Grappling with where to end would be difficult as you have discovered and as Charli pointed out as the aim is to survive it can’t end while you are alive. Although I think you have sorted this out as you have written your last two sentences one ending point that I can see is the point at which you realise that you will never return to the Lisa that was but will always be in the mode of a survivor and hypersensitive to any ache or pain but how you, now knowing that, will not let it totally rule your life or not.
It is interesting that you have gone back to how you did it and I hope your friend finds help with your first aid kit. Perhaps a focus you should rethink.
I have read a few memoirs that use 2nd person and I have to say I find them highly irritating. I have used 2nd person in one paragraph in my first memoir because I wanted to show that this was how the majority of people felt but I think in the editing I will be doing on it shortly I am going to get rid of it, because as I said I found it irritating when I read memoirs using 2nd person. This is obviously a personal thing but the reason I disliked it was because it was inclusive, and I objected to being told what I thought, particularly as often I did not think that way at all.
Sounds as though the course is being beneficial for your processes. Are you sworn to silence as to what is discussed?
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May 13, 2016 at 4:54 pm
The ever-present yet elusive “I” both writer and subject. It’s like exploring dual locations at once. You are also wise in contemplating your reader. I like how Irene said in her post that she initially wrote for her mother, then broadened the audience which changed the scope. Writing is a messy process of discovery — what we think we know or define can be turn upside-down. Alas, no room for perfection (or is that, thank goodness). It must be difficult to find a conclusion when the whole point of surviving was avoiding an end. But I think the hero’s journey offers a good model even to memoir. The conclusion is what was gained from the journey, something that changes your life and will impact those who read.
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May 14, 2016 at 9:07 pm
Such good words Charli! .. “the whole point of surviving was avoiding an end” – Avoidance also being one of those PTSD things.. Your comments are always insightful and supportive. Thank you xx
I think I wrote the last 2 sentences of the book this morning – just the task of getting the rest there! But at least I have a direction to head in now.
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May 16, 2016 at 4:20 pm
It’s always exciting to have those breakthroughs, but in truth we have to walk through uncomfortable situations and foggy thoughts to gain the clarity. Keep it up!
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May 10, 2016 at 12:39 pm
Thanks for sharing so candidly as you try to make sense of your life and your survival, and how to share that with others who long to see how it affected you, how it made you stronger, how it weakened you, and how you live each day to survive. How does that change your perspective on life? We all know our days are numbered, we know not the hour or the day. But when you receive an estimate, it must change the way you view that time. How does that change the way you view the day each morning when you awake, as you watch your son growing up into the successful young man he is? I think for me, as a reader awaiting your book, those are the things I want to know. The lows and the highs. What gave/gives you the strength to face the battles and not succumb to the disease’s will to devour you whole? At the time when you received your diagnosis you should have been feeling the invincibility of youth. To have that stolen is a very cruel twist of fate.
I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn, but I love that you have proved “them” wrong, that each day you live life to survive. Your story provides hope for others, that they too may survive, when facing an unfair ration of days. I wish your friend well. I hope your first aid kit with suggestions of visualisation and other things provides him with comfort and support.
And on a more (or less) critical note – when I read about your “course colleagues” I had to do a double take. Then, of course, I realised you hadn’t said “coarse” colleagues! 🙂
Take care my friend. It’s not a bad thing to let perfectionism fly and sail on the wings to wherever may dare!
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May 10, 2016 at 5:01 pm
Aw thank you Norah. I really value your input. You never speak out of turn. I’m keen to learn what would interest you as a reader so these are very valuable points to add to my growing pot. Someone today had some very similar questions – I’m thinking I need a mind map of sorts as the themes aren’t necessarily linear but there are some big “branches” developing 😊
As for the perfectionism! Just going back to check spelling now in case there’s a coarse friend in there! (This is the trouble with the WordPress app – I can’t check the post whilst in the middle of commenting)!
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May 11, 2016 at 8:10 am
Of course you didn’t have a coarse friend. It was just me with my silly play on words. I can’t imagine you describing anyone as coarse. Our language is amusing though. If we don’t make fun of it, someone else will!
Thank you for so graciously accepting my thoughts. I think the mind map seems like a great idea. It might help to tease out a few points, and it won’t matter if some things appear in a few different sections as the focus for each will be different.
You must be a techno-whiz. I don’t have the WP app! 🙂
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May 11, 2016 at 3:09 pm
Ah lots of apps on my iPad! They’re never quite the real thing however convenient. But I’m often on the move so its the only way to check in then.
And I have had the odd coarse friend in my time! Every one an education 😀
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May 12, 2016 at 6:06 am
I’ve given up a bit on my iPad. I find editing far too difficult. It’s very temperamental and it wastes so much time. If I want to say more than a few words I wait until I’m back at my computer. If it takes a few days, it takes a few days.
Sometimes those coarse friends show us the world in a different light, don’t they? As you say, it can be very enlightening. 🙂
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May 9, 2016 at 11:38 pm
I’m sorry you’re a bit behind with posts but I actually like the idea of “Perfectionism —> out of the window!” 🙂
Yes, I’d imagine purpose would be tough. For any memoir writer. Actually…for a lot of writers. Hope the course is going well and look forward to hearing more (and reading more). ❤
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May 10, 2016 at 8:07 am
Thanks Sarah – it is but I needed more time to say that without breaking our confidentiality pact! In danger of blurting the wrong thing otherwise. Such interesting people with interesting stories! I’m like a bunny in meadow!
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May 10, 2016 at 4:29 pm
🐇🐇🐇
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May 9, 2016 at 8:51 pm
Ahh, the fluid, multi-perspectival self. The elusive I, subject and object at once. That is a big topic to chew on Lisa. As are the other themes you mention: survival, the memoir and its purpose, intended target…(and I would think not just survivors but family of survivors and of those who sadly have not survived…we are all affected, if not in the extremely intense way you are.) And yes, what is the impetus for the story? That initial shock of facing the reality of mortality or some other point…. At any rate, great to hear more of your memoir. Having readers is essential. I applaud your courage and tenacity.
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May 10, 2016 at 5:11 pm
Oh Jeanne! I’m so glad this nearly incoherent post makes some sense! Writing on the fly is not my strength at all! And I’m grateful for your use of tenacity to describe me. That’s the positive spin and label I hadn’t seen in all this. It’s just been feeling like failing but I’m not giving up is a better way of staring back at slow progress 😎
And thank you for drawing the net wider around friends and family affected. I’ve been experimenting with an omniscient PoV for a few things. Not sure if it’ll work but it might also help to cover some supposition as I look back and weave in a few others’ memories that seem particularly defining for them.
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May 13, 2016 at 6:08 pm
I didn’t find the post incoherent at all Lisa. I found it thought provoking. Theme and purpose–it seems you give answers to both questions here: survival, but more…tenacity, “feeling like failing” but not giving up, the maddenningly slow progress, carrying on with the living while you face untimely extinction (if that comes at all close to it….). I have often wondered how I would react to a diagnosis of a terminal disease. I think everyone does. And your particular experience is different from that of all others who have gone through it. Just keep writing what Hemmingway called that one true sentence, the truest sentence you know, and then write the next one. Hugs across the miles.
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May 14, 2016 at 9:14 pm
I write lots of those sentences. He’s quite an inspiration to me (his memoir next on my list..) I just have piles of sentences though! Did you ever watch Homeland? There a crazy scene in there where Carrie Mathison writes all sorts of stuff on post-its and it looks a mess – that’s me – the story is in there somewhere but I change my mind constantly about how to piece it together. Just recruited my other half for some help – he’s much better at ‘big picture’ stuff and it’s beginning to come together. Talk about learning the hard way. I see the value in planning now but I had to go through this discovery first.
And hugs back, thank you xx
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May 15, 2016 at 4:29 pm
That’s one thing I love about the app Scrivener. Do you use it? You can create a doc for each scene or within a scene jot down notes. You can always see all your scenes and chapters in one shot in the “binder.” I work the same way as you do. Is that what they call a “pantser”? Right now I have 16 good chapters of my clients work. But the rest is a jumble of disjointed anecdotes waiting to be organized into scenes and then into a coherent chapter with a theme running through it. None of my remaining anecdotes make up a solid chapter. Arggh. When I have a fairly good draft, then I move it over to Word. For some reason I can’t take it all the way in Scrivener. Anyway, good luck with it all. So many true sentences. Now for the awesome whole. Happy Sunday.
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May 15, 2016 at 4:39 pm
PS I tried working with omniscient point of view for the same reason … to capture others’ thoughts on key events or moments. I ditched it. It seems too detached. 1st person seems the only strong POV for memoir, or…and this I love in a philosophical/gender queer memoir called The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. I am reading it now. Most of it is 1st person but she lapses into 2nd person to address her partner, to explain one step removed what she remembers it being like for him. Also dialogue, which among other things, creates dynamic blocks to break up the exposition. In my client’s story, I haven’t done the 2nd person inserts. But I have used dialogue to put those important others in and let them explain it in their own (if crafted) words.
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May 15, 2016 at 5:08 pm
I’m also finding overuse might then be boring. I’m experimenting with ‘you’ as a way of addressing the reader with questions to get them thinking about my situation rather than dismissing some of my actions. Not sure if that’ll work either but it is at least helping me to look at some things differently. The more you do the more you realise you have yet to learn, hey?!
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May 23, 2016 at 9:20 pm
It is a struggle – there’s a whole new ‘voice’ to find in a way. However, using it as a writing exercise is quite useful – a bit like perceptual positions in coaching if you’ve come across that?
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May 15, 2016 at 5:05 pm
Yes! I use Scrivener exactly like that! Every little thought hoarded into a document. Trouble starts when there are so many 😀
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May 23, 2016 at 9:21 pm
Yes! I love Scrivener. I find I get lost in Word – hate it now and wouldn’t go back! I prepare all my blog posts in Scrivener too so I can cut them up and reorder them if needs be!
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