You're not a writer? So what.

Many people are afraid to write down their lifestories because they have no training in writing, which usually translates to feeling they have no talent in that area. Does it matter if you have no talent in writing? Only if you want to be published and make money from your story. For most people, their families and friends will be reading their stories – if they ever get written – and people who love you won’t care if you are not a polished writer. You may find that as you work on your stories a lot of passion comes forth and that will show up in your writing. After all, your stories are an intimate part of you, obviously things that made enough of an impression to remain in your memory. Passion is what will lift your life stories above the earthly realm of dry dirt facts. For those who are perfectionists, read on.

The Huffington Post (among many other news media) recently interviewed bestselling memoirist Mary Karr (Liar’s Club, Cherry, Lit). HuffPo asked Karr, “Do you think quality writing can be taught?” Karr responded, “Absolutely… when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard… I rewrite, and rethink and reconsider.”

Geoff Colvin, senior editor of Fortune Magazine, has a new book out called Talent is Over-rated: What Really Separates World Class Performers From Everybody Else. He believes that performance is shaped by teachers and practice, not innate talent. “A growing body of scientific research shows that it isn’t so – that specific natural abilities don’t explain great performance.” You’ll have to read the book to know exactly what the "deliberate" practice is that helps people succeed in their endeavors (it requires feedback), but the point is that there is hope for us all that we can be trained to be better at anything. Of course, you know that.

Most of us will never be perfectly great writers, but we can be good enough – certainly good enough to write our own life stories for family. And if we’re worried, we can hire an editor. Or bake some cookies for your (grand)child's English teacher in exchange for their advice. If you're really bad at writing, then anyone can help you!

National Lifewriting Month: the staying power of memoirs

November is National Lifewriting Month. Have you started your memoir yet? Memoirs have been hitting the charts for many years now and readers have not show signs of exhaustion. Library Journal recently noted that “publishers are putting a fair amount of push behind memoirs for winter and spring 2010,” which will include the following interestingly titled books:

The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn
The Boy Who Loved Tornados: A Mother’s Story by Randi Davenport
You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story by A. Gurwitch and J. Kahn
The Shaking Woman: Or, A History of My Nerves by Siri Hustvedt
Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog by Lisa Scottoline

In a Philadelphia Inquirer article entitled Celebrating the Memoir, Dianna Marder construes that “The emphasis on memoir is so strong that autobiography, history and fiction may be endangered. And the reasons for memoir's popularity may rest in our very nature as Americans: In a land where the majority rules, individuality is exalted and memoir is more befitting the American ideal of resourcefulness.”

Indeed, memoirs are much more fascinating than nonfiction history books since a personal perspective is involved. Who doesn’t love a good story of how it really was versus a bunch of dry facts. Autobiographies tend to suffer the same fate of dry regurgitation, while fiction…well, Ben Yagoda, author of Memoir: A History says “When it comes to proving points and making cases, fiction's day is done.” Mary Karr, whose publisher claims she “kick-started the memoir revolution” with The Liar’s Club (1995), has this to say: “The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold.” Comparing bad memoirs to bad novels, “But the most whiny memoir is written by someone passionately attached to his or her subject matter. And the connectedness of that single voice is something readers long for now.” Karr, also wrote the memoirs Cherry and the recently published Lit.

Everyone has a story to tell. Not all are meant to be published, but all are meant to be told.

The legacy of a child

Six-year-old Elena Desserich died of brain cancer in 2007, but she left behind treasures for her family that became a book for everyone. Notes Left Behind is a tribute to Elena and helps to raise funds for The Cure Starts Now, a foundation started by her parents supporting research towards curing pediatric brain cancer. Perhaps you’ve heard about Elena’s story on Good Morning America or the Today show.

Elena was an artist, and when she became sick, and especially after she lost her ability to speak, she began drawing pictures and writing notes to her parents, her little sister, other relatives, even her great-aunt’s dog. After her death, her parents began finding notes hidden not just in Elena’s room but in their own books and dresser drawers, in a briefcase, in a box of Christmas ornaments. They were the simple drawings and misspelled notes of a beginning writer, but Elena’s mother thinks they were her daughter’s way of letting them know everything would be okay. Each note found was “like a little hug from her.” Elena’s parents did everything they could to hide from her the fact that her illness was terminal. Did Elena sense the end coming and want to leave love notes behind, or was she just a prolific and fun-loving artist expressing herself?

Elena’s father kept a personal journal for younger daughter Grace during the family’s ordeal so that she might know her sister, but the idea grew into something larger. Notes Left Behind is a sad and unflinching story of how a family coped with having a child with cancer, but is also about capturing “the love, the compassion, the minutes of life – not necessarily the milestones.” A reminder for all.

Inheriting emotional pain

Bending Toward the Sun by Leslie Gilbert-Lurie is a new memoir out this fall that delves into an interesting concept of whether one person’s emotional trauma can be inherited, in a sense, by their children and grandchildren. Little Rita Lurie lived through the Holocaust hidden in a tiny dark attic, near starving with fourteen other family members. She watched her mother and brother die and after the war wandered for years with the rest of her family looking for a country that would accept them. Many years later, in California, Lurie’s grown up and successful daughter probed into her mother’s childhood and discovered the fear and guilt that remained embedded in her character, and despite a deep mother’s love for her children, the effect of the pain was passed on to her daughter and filtered down even to her granddaughter. Bending Toward the Sun is now on my reading list.

Writing my own mother’s memoir, Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, I also discovered how her childhood pain and trauma permanently affected her, and thus my sister and I. When painful emotions do not heal well, the wounds can affect one’s whole outlook on the world as well as everyday behavior. The parent cannot help but pass on that outlook and behavior to the children. It takes a recognition of the negative thoughts and actions, a willingness to face what has caused them, and an ability to come to peace with them for the ghosts to be laid to rest, allowing a sense of freedom from the past and an openness towards other people and the future. That kind of awareness is rare, unless it is pointed out by someone. The desire and courage to confront the devil is rarer still. And it takes an aware child to recognize aspects of their parent’s behavior that they do not want to duplicate themselves and a lot of determination to be able to resist the strong temptation of that behavior. Our life threads are so entwined.

This inheriting of pain should give us all a stronger urge to settle with our past so that we can live a brighter future ourselves and free our families from the monkey on our back. A good start is to write it all down.

Another lesson from Anne Frank

The Anne Frank House museum posted on YouTube the only live footage of young Anne before her death from typhoid in a concentration camp. The short clip was taken following the July 1941 wedding of the Franks' neighbor, with 13-year-old Anne looking down to the street from an upper window to see the young couple leaving the apartment building. Years later, after Anne’s diary was published, the couple recognized Anne and gave a copy of the clip to Anne’s father and to the museum where it has since been available for viewing by visitors. There are other videos posted on the Anne Frank House new You Tube channel, including one of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, speaking about his daughter’s diary which he received after his family’s deaths. When he finally read the diary, he was quite surprised by Anne’s deep thoughts and self criticism.



Probably most parents don’t really know their children, just as most children – even grown children – probably don’t really know their parents, this despite living under the same roof for years, speaking to each other daily, observing each others’ oddities and emotional hot buttons. We don’t dig into each others’ thoughts or formative experiences, we just don’t have the awareness to do that or, in our busy world, the time. And yet, when we are able to ask the deep questions, probe into past experiences, we learn so much about each other and why we act the way we do, which then enriches our lives and our relationships. When I heard some of my mother’s childhood stories, her whole being seemed to be illuminated to me. Writing about our thoughts and our reflections on experiences is even more of a treasure as a lasting and most intimate look at who we are. Imagine what gold Anne’s diary is to her father.

Take a look at the YouTube channel for the Anne Frank House museum, which includes the clip of Anne and a virtual tour of the attic space the Frank family hid in during WWII

Using artwork and photos in memoir

Tonight I attended a talk by famous architect Gyo Obata whose artist/professor father was imprisoned in a U.S. internment camp along with his family during WWII. Gyo escaped by being allowed to attend Washington University in St. Louis, which agreed to accept about 22 Japanese students at that time. Photographer Ansel Adams’ son Dr. Michael Adams was also there to speak about their family’s friendship with the Obatas and how Ansel Adams was asked to document the Manzanar camp in photos.

After Chiura Obata’s death, his granddaughter wrote Topaz Moon, what amounts to an illustrated, historical memoir of the family’s internment time based on letters, stories from her grandmother, notes written by her grandfather about his sketches and paintings, and research about the internment. Obata’s art is mostly sumi black Chinese ink or pencil on white paper – often simple depictions of everyday camp life that serve as snapshots since cameras were not allowed inside. He may not have been a writer, but he captured the dust storms, the crowded living conditions, visitors meeting through barbed wire, as well as the beauty of the distant mountains.

My own mother used to be a talented artist and when telling me her childhood stories for Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, she often doodled to help explain her words. Fortunately I kept those sketches and was able to use many in the book – a picture is worth a thousand words, you know, and especially valuable as part of the essence of the person who created it.

Visuals in a memoir are a wonderful addition, from photos of artworks or craft pieces to the scanned handwriting from letters or recipe books to little scribblings or doodles. They illustrate more fully who the person is in ways that mere words cannot. Of course, photos of the memoir subject and their family are wonderful to see included. Most of us use the camera to document important events, but perhaps the most important events are the everyday ones. Those are the ones that really capture the personality and loves – a mother cooking, planting flowers, playing the piano or a father grilling a steak, sitting in a favorite car or kids sitting on the porch eating popsicles. Don’t forget the photos of a pet cat purring in a lap or a beloved dog getting his ears scratched. With a little extra thought, a memoir might expand into quite a three-dimensional picture.

Should you write about your kids?

Julie Myerson, British mom and writer, was lambasted for writing about her drug addicted teen in her recent book The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story. Her son called his mother “obscene” for “exploiting and exaggerating” his troubles even though he liked an early draft showed to him and let her use some of his poems. The book has just come out in the U.S. and Myerson is awaiting a possible backlash here. Or perhaps Americans are more used to exposes on drug abuse and tell-all stories in both books and in the media. Myerson states, for one, that this is her story and the way she saw it and, second, she saw a need in the U.K. to support other parents dealing with their childrens’ drug abuse, to let them know they aren’t alone. U.S. authors David Scheff (Beautiful Boy) and Michael Greenberg (Hurry Down Sunshine) have recently written about their children (drug abuse, mental illness, respectively) to popular acclaim. Read the Amazon reviews of these books to see many thankful responses of others dealing with loved ones lost in similar circumstances. “Heartbreaking,” “inspiring,” and “hopeful” describe these books.

Myerson made the decision to write her story to help other parents. It is unclear at what point her son decided it was a fictionalized assault on his privacy – he was in his late teens when the troubles began and 20 when the book was first published. Scheff’s son and Greenberg’s daughter, on the other hand, were of legal age at the time of writing and approved of their fathers’ writings. A New York Times article, A Mother's Memoir, A Son's Anguish, gives an excellent discussion of this privacy dilemma. Underage child involved or only adults, all memoir writers must decide what to include about others in their lives and whether it is worth the possible ire or embarrassment of those others. If your book will help others desperately needing support, if it will help others gain understanding of the plight of others, is it worth it? Is it worth it for anything less? Can you be more tactful and respectful? These decisions should be made with a clear head sans thoughts of anger or revenge. And hopefully sheer exploitation for financial gain never crosses one's mind.

See also What would my mother say, and other memoir fears

Living the memory - Jim Ballard

James Ballard’s final post here reflects on observing one’s self in the here and now. What happens today are the seeds of future memories. Do you see them forming?

Part 3. Living the Memory

It can be confusing to think of creating a memory, because memories are moments of looking back at the past—i.e., they are re-collections. A useful way to get your mind around the issue is to play around with time.

Look back from the future

Take yourself in your imagination to a future moment in which you are looking back at Now. In that imagined future time, talk to yourself about this present moment. Say, That was important, and I didn’t even know it. How could I have dreamed what would occur as a result of that time?

See the present as memory potential

Looking back from the future puts you into a frame of mind of observing what is unique and potential about where you are right now. Practice being awake to the beauty and wonder of each passing moment. That is, after all, the only way to truly be alive.

Good luck making moments memorable!


Thanks, Jim, for your thought-provoking posts! Jim is a nationally known life coach, author, and motivational speaker. His fables challenge readers and listeners to manage their minds to generate joy by going beyond themselves. Visit Coach Jim’s blog or Jim Ballard's website for further inspiration and information.